Skip to main content

Smart Sewing

One of the blogs that I read regularly, is http://www.littlegreybungalow.blogspot.com/. I'm not into cats and there are regular postings of cute cat pictures.  But she has regular postings of illustrations and directions from vintage sewing and hand craft magazines from early in the 20th century.

Several postings came from this publication, put out in 1949. In this 80 page magazine format publication are excellent directions and diagrams for about twenty differnt garments for women as well as several outfits for kids  and some good home dec projects. If you go on the little grey bungalow site, and click on the sewing postings,you can access all of the wonderful photographs from the book.

The clothing projects were designed by Francis Blondin, author of  The New Encyclodedia of Modern Sewing.The Wise Encyclopedia of Modern Sewing by France Blandin by France Blandin I'm a big fan of Ms. Blondin. She is a smart cookie with a breezy writing style and an excellent explainer of the difficult. I had thought that the marvellous sewing encyclopedia was Blondin's only published work. Now I am on a quest for more of her work. She teaches garment making exactly the way I want to learn how to do it, with  simple shapes, drafted from body measurements made into lovely, interesting garments.


My sister bought me this publication as a birthday gift and I have been enjoying it tremendously.  There is an adorable darted apron that I think I may start with.

And as a as footnote to my Frantic Friday posting. The chicken I had purchased in a rush had gone bad. We ate a couple of bites each and had to toss two chickens and the chard cooked in chicken juice into the garbage. I got a mild case of food poisoning. The supermarket said they would refund me for the cost of the chickens.
Labels:

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