Skip to main content

A jacket for my elegant cousin





Saturday evening, I got a call from my aunt. She was in town with her daughter and wanted to take us out for brunch Sunday morning. I am well enough brought up that it isn't nice to show up empty handed. So I looked around to see what I could make for my aunt and my cousin.

My cousin has a wardrobe that I seriously envy. This is not something that I say lightly, either. My cousin has a wonderful wardrobe of craft show jackets and scarves. Her prefered colors are black and grey with the occasional touch of red. She chooses garments are are tasteful and quiet, but as you take a good look, just how wonderful and deeply interesting they truly are, begin to reveal themselves. ( Actually, this is probably a pretty accurate description of my cousin's personality as well.) Most of what she chooses is distinguished by it's fabulous texture.

I haven't posted in about a week because my house has been full to the rafters with guests. It was hard to sew with my dining room table filled with folks working away on laptops, as my work space, is the dining room.


I had a bit of pent of sewing built up, so when my eye fell on the funky textured black mystery fabric from Kaballa Man. I knew that it wanted to be a dolman sleeved jacket for my cousin. ( A dolman sleeved jacket is just about the easiest garment to make. ) My cousin and I are roughly the same size, but not exactly the same shape. So I felt comfortable making the jacket work for my body, and assuming that it would work for my cousin as well. At my first attempt, the jacket hit at the tops of my thighs and it looked dowdy on me, so I cut off several inches and hemmed it at the waist. It looked cute on me. I used a strip of silver crinkled mystery fabric, purchased on the same shopping adventure from Kaballa Man as the collar. The rest of the silver fabric is now a tank top and skirt that I wear fairly regularly to synagogue under a boucle jacket.

The jacket came together quickly. The odd, spongy textured tabric is fun to sew. ( Don't worry, I didn't neglect my aunt, she got a silver and black metal and silk scarf. )

When my cousin tried on the jacket it looked great, but it was too short on her. My cousin is actually several inches shorter than I am, but given how her body is constructed, the jacket didn't flatter her in it's shorter incarnation.

I took the jacket back, and this morning, I added a skirt and also made a deep box pleat both in the original jacket and in the skirt to help shape the jacket a bit and to add a bit of interest to the back. I'm liking how it looks. I hope that it will look good on my cousin. She leaves town tomorrow and I hope we can get together before she leaves so she can take it with her.
Posted by Picasa

Comments

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
8 comments
Read more

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 ...
2 comments
Read more