A Pattern Review Shopping Day

For those of you who don't know, Pattern Review is a website put together for people who sew. The owner of the site comes from the world of computers where review sites that let you know if a piece of software or hardware matches up to the hype or not. As she began to sew, she was surprised that there was no equivalent in the world of sewing. She started the site to the to address that lack. Pattern Review is a huge site with more than 100,000 subscribers.

The site has reviews of sewing patterns, stores, sewing machines and the like. My favorite part of the site is the discussion boards which has created something of a world wide community of people that sew.
Yesterday, several of us met to shop the garment district.

Pattern Review has held several New York weekends over the past few years, but shopping the fabric district on the weekends is less than satisfying, because so many of the stores are closed on the weekends. Several of us decided to get together on a Monday Holiday to shop together. Yesterday, President's day was the day we chose to get together to play in the fabric district. One of the pleasures of the day for me, is that my friend Ann, from my home town of Quincy, stayed with us.

Another pleasure of shopping with other people that love to sew is how the generous nature of people emerges duiring the process of shopping. There is always much more fabric out there than one can possibly buy. Each of us is sewing for a differently shaped body. Most of us have coloring that varies, and different colors that suit us. As we each ooh and ahh over fabrics, we listen to one another. It becomes clear that Ann looks terrific is bright, strong colors. As we wander through the forsts of bolts we will start pulling reds that will look terrifc on her, or those rusty brown that looks so good on Elizabeth or those funky retro shirtings for Peter or preppy pastels for Emory.

Looking at fabrics with other people helps me to look at colors, and at fabrics with new eyes. My sense of what is lovely is expanded beyond my own taste, beyond my own needs, my own coloring. Seeing what looks beautiful on a range of different people with a range of different looks and needs is fascinating in it's own right. It is also hugely important for me as someone who designs not just for herself but for other people.

If you want to see a slightly different perspectives on our day, you can visit http://www.malepatternboldness.blogspot.com/ or you can visit http://www.patternreview.com/.

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

Search This Blog