A wedding dress for a six year old

My sewing student is friends with a little girl in our community. I met the little girl, as her mother, was saying kaddish for her own mother. The little girl would come to Friday night services and carefully fold and unfold pieces of fabric during services. Clearly, I was enchanted. The little girl's grandmother was a sewer. Her mother was not.

Several months ago, the little girl requested that her mother make her a wedding dress for dress up. The mother was sad, because she knew that this was exactly the sort of thing that her own mother would have excelled at. The mother said to the little girl " I really wish that I could make you the dress, but I can't sew."

The little girl then piped up that they did know someone who could sew, my student. So, my student was given the task of making a wedding dress for the little girl.

My student and I discussed how one listens to what a client wants, drawing sketches to make sure that everyone is on the same page . My student took the little girl's measurements, ordered fabric and then we got to work.

Because this is a dress-up garment, it needed to be made to be able to put up with lots of hard use. My student is very careful with her own clothing, but one can't expect a six year old and her four year old sister to be as careful.

Another issue for my student was one of taste. My student loves clothing that is spare and architectural. This wedding dress is being made for a girly girl with frou frou taste. The dress needed to satisfy the six year old's idea of glamour.

In making this dress my student learned how to make the fabric roses that adorn the waist line of the dress. She also learned how to gather fabric by pulling on the bobbin thread. She loved the design pissiblities provided by gathering and I think she is mulling over how to incorporate gathers into future garments. she used those same gathering skills to make the gathered tulle trim at the skirt hem.

As we were working on the dress I kept reminding my student that a six year old girl who whants a wedding dress is into "more is more" . I had thought that a sprinkling of heat set crystals on the bodice would make the little girl very happy.

Yesterday , I took out the heat setting tool and the crystals and we went to work. As I anticipated, my student found using those crystals entirely addictive. It's hard to see those twinkles in the photos, but the bodice is truly twinkly.

While my student was finishing off the hem of the dress, I made the veil. It was a quick job, a large oval of tulle gathered in the middle and sewn to a clear plastic comb.

Right after last night's sewing lesson, my student brought the dress and the veil to the little girl. I asked her to send me photos. And here they are.

Those of you who are fitting fanatics will notice that the dress is a bit long waisted. Had the little girl been present for fittings I would have tweaked the fit. But I assume that her torso will grow as she does and the waist will fall into the right place before she outgrows both the dress itself and the idea of dress up.

This was a long and complicated project for my student to complete. It pushed her to learn new skills and to refine others. I think that my student needs to make some really quick projects next. There is a dress with an elastic waist that is being shown in all of the teen stores she is dying to make.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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