The Most Boring Dress in the World

is sometimes the one you need to make the most. Every closet needs it's share of memorable clothes. But what one really needs, is truly boring garments that you can wear over and over again in various combinations.

Boring dress worn with fun new belt

This purple tank dress qualifies as a perfect boring dress. It's a simple tank dress made out of a pique` knit, much like you might find in a Lands' End polo. It isn't a fabric one gets ecstatic about when one finds it in a fabric store. It's a boring, comfortable, serviceable, fabric. The color is dark and quiet as well.

This dress, however will be worn constantly. If I wore this dress to synagogue every week for a year ( as I did with a previous ideal boring dress), no one would notice. But I may very well get compliments on what I was wearing, week after week.

Every closet needs lots of boring clothes.

Boring dress worn with boring grey wool cardigan and a big belt

I used a favorite summer tank dress in an optically challenging print as my guide. The summer dress fits snugly and is made out of a very stretchy fabric. I needed this dress to be cut slightly larger to make up for the fact that this fabric had relatively little stretch. So I placed the dress folded in half a few inches from the fold of the fabric to give me a bit more room.How did I know exactly how far from the fold to place the dres??? I didn't. I made an educated guess. I suppose if I were better at math, I could quantify the calculations I made to arrive at exactly the amount to add at the center front. Those calculations were made but in the same way that I know how much flour to add to a batch of bread.In other words, If you use this method, you may make some errors in youur calculations as you start out but just get better at it as you keep trying.This is one of the reasons it's so nice to work with Fabric Mart Bundles, an error just isn't a disaster. If I mess up I can guiltlessly toss the error, or keep it around to figure out a solution some other time.

I edited as I cut the fabric, lowering the arm-holes and the front neckline. I serged the dress together and then turned and top stitched all of the raw edges. Beginning to end, this dress took about 20 minutes. The fabric came from a Fabric Mart mystery bundle where you get 10 yards of fabric for $15. So for an investment of about $2 in fabric and 20 minutes of time I have a dress that I will wear to death.

Boring dress worn with just the big belt

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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