sarah in nyc

Earlier this spring, when I was in the fabric district one of the stores on 8th Avenue, (perhaps it was Ebad)  they had a giant cardboard box filled with odds and ends that they were selling for silly prices. One of the treasures in the box spoke to me. It was a length of  a border printed  Pucci-esque jersey. It was in the bin because there was a slight printing error in the fabric. I think that the  piece  ( about a yard and change) cost me about a subway fare, perhaps it was a bit more. I'm in the middle of solving problems on an invitation that I'm designing . I am also figuring out my next trip to Boston to ease my mother's transition from a medical facility to home. So, of course it seemed the perfect moment to expend some nervous energy making a dress out of the fabric. The fabric has borders along both selvages and I was nervous about getting enough fabric for the body of the dress out of  a not quite full width, of not all that m...

We are attending a wedding in Boston this weekend. We are planning to take the bus. I may be going up early if my mother is being spring from the rehab where she has been recuperating for the past several weeks. My usual wear -to -a -wedding dress needs to be ironed,and won't survive the trip as well packed into the bottom of a suitcase.  I needed a dress that could be thrown in the bottom of a suit case and still look good. My last Fabric Mart mystery bundle included a soft bamboo knit in beige. On a whim, I had also purchased an Anna Sui lace in black. I realized that I could line the lace with the bamboo knit and end up with a wedding appropriate dress. I decided to make a fixed wrap dress, that is a dress that looks like a wrap dress, and is constructed the same way, but I stitch down the edges of the dress permanently. I have made several dresses just like this. Here are just two examples I pt down another of my wrap dresses down on the fabric and used that as ...

I assume that most people aqure a dining room set by purchasing one. Our dining room furniture has come into our lives in stages. When my husband moved into our apartment in 1978, there was a pretty 1930's  mahogany chair that was left by the previous tenant. That's the chair my husband sit in at the nead of the table. Two sturdy 1940's maple chairs arrived from a friend after she and her husband split up. Our   1922 mahogany table and china cabinet came from Uncle Irving's girlfriend Mary's parent's home, after Mary died. ( I know, a complicated thread of relationship. ) Four of our chairs were found on the street.  One of the chairs helped me to teach the legal concept of hefker   to my youngest . We were walking to his bus stop in the morning when I found  a lovely late '40's kitchen chair on the curb . I picked it up and took it with us to the bus stop. My son reprimanded me. Wasn't that stealing??? I explained to him that it was hefker , ...

Tabitha tried on her dress a few weeks back. I had made it too small. The sleeve holes were too small. The dress was too short and the neck was too tight. Tabitha's mom loved the fabric. I unpicked the neckline elastic and asked my daughter to remove the bottom ruffle. I had fortunately, kept the remains of the shirtand cut strips off of the sleeve to extend the length of the dress. I re cut the armholes so that Tabitha will have lots of room to move around.  I added elastic just at the front of the neckline. This version is a bit plainer but hopefully she will be happy to wear it. Tabitha and her parents are joining us for Friday night dinner. Other preparations for tonight include chicken with portobello mushrooms and onions and white wine.  I sent my kids out to buy the vegetable portion of our meal. When my daughter asked me what she should buy..I told her that it was her choice.  She brought back string beans, mushrooms and onions and cucumber.  All great ...

Forgive me, between tending to two sick kids, picking up a healthy one from camp , continuing issues with my mother who is not getting better as fast was we all expected, getting a busted pipe fixed in the bathroom sink, and getting an electrician to put in a new and more powerful outlet, so our AC can actually work, I didn't have too much time to sew, or to write about sewing. Often I will do guilt sewing. My daugher was sick. She had asked me to make her another peasant blouse out of a man's dress shirt. I had learned how to do this from a Homestead blog back when my daughter was in middle school. ( I had kept the link hoping to credit the clever blogger, but alas the link became broken soon after I found the brilliant tutorial, so I can not give proper credit to the woman whose idea this was.) Thursday, after my daughter has spent the previous night moaning in pain, I felt sorry for her and went to the thrift to see if there were any good men's shirts to make  her th...

I haven't been doing all that much sewing for the past several days. My oldest has been hit with an awful ear infection. It takes me back to my days of being the parent of really little children. I have been sitting up nights with my girl as she moans and groans. I haven't seen her this ill in years. Our family's usual remedy for pain has been little cloth rice filled pillows that we either freeze or microwave and apply on whatever pains us. I threw away our old ones before Passover. My daughter needed a warm compress on her ear. At 1:00am, I wasn't going to sew one. So I went into the pile of laundry awaiting folding and found a cotton sock. I added a cup of rice and knotted the top. Not elegant, but it worked. My daughter asks for a hot sock as she lies on the couch and we comply. So three doctors, three antibiotics later, we are still waiting to see real improvement.

I cheated a bit yesterday. The Challa cover with the appliqued leaves was not quite completed. It was still not backed and was missing it's border. As I looked at it during the evening, I realized that it needed some floral matter in addition to the appliqued foliage. Sometimes I purchase fabric because I have a specific project in mind for it. Sometimes I purchase fabric because it simply appeals to me. The crinkle purple iridescent poly I used for the flowers appealed to me on a purely irrational basis. I found it in a curtain store on 37th street. it was a magpie purchase. "Shiny! Crinkled! Iridescent! Must own!" At $5/yard two yards was not a bad deal. I tore off a three inch strip and serged the long ends together. Then I snipped off 3-5 inch lengths of the strip , sewed them into bagels and then gathered the serged edge.. Then I gathered the open end and sewed the flower like purple lumps onto the challa cover. Several of these flowers have a bead sewn into the ...

I have a friend whose kids look so much alike that when child #3 needed to bring a baby picture into school and none was to be found, they sent him off to school with a baby photo of their oldest, and none were the wiser. To me, my kids look like they all came from the same family. Several times though, my youngest has had the same teacher as his older brother, and the teacher had no clue that the two were related. They have a fairly unusual last name too. When I make challa covers I will often do a small series at the same time, meaning two or three. I will make the series using the same fabrics, and often the same techniques. Often, like my two sons, they end up looking very different. These two Lecha Dodi Challa covers. Yes, this is the very same text used for the Ultrasuede challa cover. And yes again, I used the same leaf and vine motif on all three challa covers. The text has been stencilled onto both using a stencil cut out of Bristol board. I used the same periwinkle blue ...

If I have any obsessive readers, they might have noticed that last week, there was no Food Friday entry. That's because as far as I was concerned, there was no food prep. I had gone to Boston to take care of my mother. I left the rest of my family home. My big kids made a feast for Shabbat dinner. My son got up early to make the challa. He and my daughter worked together to make Chinese vegetable dumplings,Chinese Red Stewed chicken and a Chinese inspired shredded vegetable salad. They even invited a guest  Yes, I'm really proud of them. I ate Friday night dinner at my sister's. It was a Middle Eastern inspired meal. Yes, that too was good. This week I'm back in the cooking saddle. I had decided to make noodles and cheese again and serve that with fish. ( That is both noodles and cheese made from scratch) While at the farmer's market this morning I ran into my friend Cathy. She invited us over, so we are joining families and meals for Shabbat. I finally remem...

The strip of velveteen dried over night. I set the color with an iron, before rinsing it to release any extra dye. At that point the nap of the velveteen was all matted. So I tossed the strip of fabric into the dryer to both re-fluff the nap and to set the color.

I need to make borders for the honors cards I had started a while back. The base of the cards is made out of Chinese silk brocade. I wanted to used something sturdy because these cards will be handled quite a bit. I decided to use some white cotton velveteen that was in my stash. I want the colors to be intense to go with both the ark curtain, made by Bracha Lavee, and the table cover that I made. Many years ago, I read that if you paint color on the back of velvet then the color seeps into the fabric better. This was actually an excellent piece of advice. If you just paint the dye from the front only the top of the nap gets color. Painting on velveteen you really need to lay the layers of color on heavily. The nap just drinks up that color. Unless you put down lots of color you will end up with a soft and cloudy look, that isn't what I want in this piece. The photos above show the velvet while it is still wet. I wet the velvet before I began painting with the dyes just to be sur...

Image from uwec.edu This is essentially what the house I grew up in looks like. There are thousands of them all over New England. If you were looking to build one just like this in 1955, you would look for "Garrison Colonial' in a house plan catalog. The location of the treees in the photo is almost exactly right too.   Image from antiquehomestyle.com These houses could be customized with fancier woodwork or higher end plumbing. Often, various additions were added over the years. The house I grew up in, had a large side porch added soon after my parents moved in. I have been in Boston for the past several days, helping to take care of my mother who is now in the hospital. Yesterday I spent some time with a friend who I haven't seen since I was sixteen.  My friend lives in a Garrison Colonial that was built just slightly fancier than the one I grew up in. My mother moved out of the house I grew up in just a year ago. I loved being able to re-experience the sp...