fruits of my adventure with Elizabeth

Last Wednesday I got together with my friend Elizabeth, who I met through http://www.patternreview.com/. Elizabeth has a much more precise and careful approach to sewing than I do. It's always nice to share ideas and to run around in the fabric district with a fellow sewer.

We had planned to meet at Greenberg and Hammer. Both of us had notions-ey purchases to make and since we were showing up form different directions it's comfortable place to poke around while waiting for a friend to show up.

I got there a bit early and was looking through the latest issue of Threads magazine which had an article about working with rectangular godets. Elizabeth showed up and we both bought interfacings for different projects, needles and threads. Elizabeth also needed some zippers. It's a nice place for poking a round with nice staff who can also walk you through the intricacies of different sorts of interfacing.

Most of the folks at http://www.patternreview.com/ love shopping at Metro Textile. I had never been. Elizabeth took me to metro. Metro is run by Kashi who came to the states from Iran after the Revolution. The store is run a bit differently than most of the other stores in the district. You tell Kashi what you are looking for , and then he brings you a bolt, or a selection of bolts that he thinks might strike your fancy.

His range of fabrics is pretty wide. He carries a wider quality range than Kaballa Man, with more high end fabrics than Kabbala Man carries. I'm not in dire need of fabrics so I tend not to buy unless I need it for a client or the price is amazing.

Kashi had several bolts of cool looking Missoni-like fabric. I loved it, but really didn't need it at $6.00 a yard. I did want come of the drapey grey jersey. i have a Norma Kamali skirt int he same fabric. It will be nice to make a top to match.

I was about to make my final decisions, when I found the remnant bin. I found some luscious suedes and a length of that Missoni fabric, for $2. I bought it along with a lurex knit.

Elizabeth had some good ideas about how to lay out the dress, and today I made it. The rectangular godet was sparked by the look in the Threads Magazine. The dress feels very much like a memento of a fun day in the garment district.

Barukh Dayan HaEmet - Blessed be the True Judge

In 1986, when I first began working for my synagogue, one of the volunteers was a teeny little Austrian woman. Ida was so little and cute, you could swear you could just put her in your pocket and carry her around. Ida also babysat for a little girl in our community. When I saw the two of them running around together and laughing as if they were both four, I knew that when I had kids, Ida would babysit for my kids. In order to be sure that Ida would take care of my oldest, I told her I was pregnant at the same time I told my mother. Soon after my oldest was born, Ida was ready. She was silly, but she was also Austrian. She had her rules. She would care for a child only until they could walk. She felt that she was too old to chase children. She would work only twelve hours a week. The baby had to be fed, dressed and ready to go out when she showed up. Ida's rules made sense. It taught me, and my oldest, the value of having a schedule. Ida and ...

Two funerals and a birthday

I know that it has been a while since I posted. We went to Boston last weekend to celebrate the bar mitzvah of a family friend. I may post about the weekend in a different post. Two disparate topics in one post is all I can manage today. Yesterday was a busy day and filled with big emotions. We began the day at the funeral of a young man who was a Hebrew School classmate of my older son's. I had such fond, fond memories of the sweet, funny, kind and exceptionally bright young man who also had terrible struggles. I kept remembering the young man both as a delightful child full of promise and the suffering that he and his family have been through for the past many years. I sat with two women whose children attended preschool with the young man. We three held one another in our sorrow. Yesterday was also my husband's birthday. My husband is not someone who wants things. When we were at Bingo---the kosher version of Costco I spotted a large package of ste...

It All Feels Like Yesterday

Today, an oponion piece in the Wall Street Journal had the headline These Days, It All Feels Like Yesterday. It seemed a perfect way to sum up how we live our lives these days. I have been far more willing during this Covid time to do the sort of slow going work that I tend to avoid like the plague during normal times. I have been working away on Max's tallit. I had decided to get the lettering on the atara in a new to me way. Actually, to be completely honest, this is a method I have read about since I was a kid. You draw the design on a bit of what is called "waste fabric". Then you embroider the design and then you pull away the waste fabric thread by thread. The embroidered design remains, but all of your guidelines are gone, as if by magic. I had more or less finished embroidering the letters. (There were little bits of letters I hadn't quite finished but knew that I could add after the purple fabric was pulled away.) I began by picking out all of my red basting ...

sarah in nyc

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