sarah in nyc

Our friends Kir and Beth just had a baby boy. The Brit is on Thursday.  I  knew that at least one of my old sewing books would have directions for making baby stuff. I am a big fan of Frances Blondin.She edited my new obsession, the Smart Sewing magazines put out during the late 1940’s and into the 1950’s. She produces wonderful easy to follow diagrams for making clothing. This diagram came out of her  The New Encyclopedia of Modern sewing  from 1946. You can buy this book on Amazon for a couple of bucks. It is worth every penny ( and more). Blondin's grid is in inch per square and is really easy to follow. I made the jacket out of two smooth cotton shirtings. Both were renants from other fabrics. the red and white from a dress that failed. The blue and white from a summer skirt I had made a few seasons back. I think both fabrics were from mystery bundles from www.fabricmartfabrics.com . I think I may have selected that blue fabric. I tend to love fabri...

The architects of the Bauhaus felt that good architecture and good art uplifts the lives of those who work surrounded by it.   Le Corbusier built worker housing assuming that the fact that good design could improve the lives of workers the same way that fair wages and good working conditions also improve the lives of workers. As much as I adore good architecture, I had assumed that this was entirely utopian thinking on his part. That is, until a few weeks ago when my husband took me to see this mosaic in the lobby of 1375 Broadway.  This mosaic mural depicts the history of textiles. The piece was designed by Jack Lubin who produced several similar monumental mosaic murals in public spaces in New York City. Lubin was known primarily as a mural painter. This mural is a wonderful homage to the history of textile production. One of my favorite parts of the mural is the workmanship in the background. One would expect the mosaic tiles to be set in straight rows. Instea...

Well, here it is. I’m really pleased. My neighbor thinks that it looks like it came out of Pompeii. I love that despite the wild color combinations it’s actually a pretty calm piece. I hadn’t planned on the stenciled stripes. I wasn’t happy with how high the stripes were on the tallit, so I added first the purple stripe and then the terracotta one. I had purchased the stencil for the “Old Shul” tallit. I used a mixture of silver acrylic paint and finely powdered metallic in bronze for the stencil.I wanted a soft, slightly faded image. All of the elements work together well. The mix of wild elements reminds me of my older son’s Hebrew school class. The kids were all really mouthy. One would have expected them to be really snotty to one another and to their teachers. Instead , they were kind and supportive of one another. They were outrageous and really funny but worked well in a group. One might have expected this tallit to be clown-like with it’s riot of reds. Instead it is gra...

Shaun’s tallit is nearly done. Shaun is one of those women who has an intense relationship with fabric. One of the fabrics she showed me  while we were working out what her tallit was to  look like was a batiked silk scarf with loosely painted pomegranates   I drew the outlines of the pomegranates with tailors chalk on the magenta silk noil. I like to have each of the pinot/corners of the tallit be slightly different. It gives the wearer of the tallit something pretty to focus on  if they loose focus on prayer. Shaun is someone who gets a bit of whimsy. So I played with each pomegranate, playing with different techniques. Among the techniques I used were embroidering with my sewing machine, hand embroidery, beading and couching ribbon.  I couched the metallic borders with a zig- zag stich on my machine. I like how the metallic borders look like they were doodled by hand.

Today I smelled one of the oddest odor combinations. On the corner of Columbus and 97th there was a coffee pushcart that was selling warmed up baked goods, so you could smell those sweet  toasty baked aromas. The lawn in front of the apartment complex there had just been mowed. Of course, there was that usual New York smell of car exhaust. None of those is particularly unpleasant on their own, but in combination it was just plain weird. Just in case you wanted to know. Today has mostly been a day of laundry. Not only am I doing all of my daughter's laundry, our own hampers were pretty backed up. Actually, more correctly this has been a day of doings the beginnings of things with not a whole lot to show for myself at the moment. I did get my serger humming again. There are times when my serger behaves like a balky child. I cajoled it into good behavior. I am filling in a Ketuba/marriage contract for a friend so spent part of the day trying to get all of the t...

The graduation was lovely ( the weather was not).  As you can see, the jacket and dress were worn. My daughter is now on her way home and looking for a job.

I live in New York where black is seen as a perfectly cheerful color to wear. I didn’t grow up here. I grew up in a small city just south of Boston. Talbots began in a lovely town just to the south of where I lived.  While the pink and green preppy look is not what I usually wear, I do have a certain soft spot for that country club look. When I found this Marc Jacobs jacket in the thrift store, it just called my name. I showed the jacket to my neighbor who was born in Brooklyn, she thought that I had lost my mind. The saccharine pink and green of the jacket reminded me of little girls walking to church on Easter morning in the snow while wearing their think pastel Easter coats and straw hats and ruffled socks. My daughter knew exactly why I would choose such a jacket. She is graduating this weekend from one of the Seven Sisters colleges. My daughter requested that I wear this jacket to her graduation and the garden party that follows.She thought that it would be amusing to see ...

Linda started rabbinical school about ten years ago, when her kids were still pretty young. It’s been a long road balancing home life, work and school. This Thursday, Linda graduates as a full fledged rabbi.  Linda had initially thought of having her own rabbinic mentors tie the tzitit with her. In the end, she decided to have her husband and her children, now grown,  who supported her through this adventure, tie the tzitzit with her. As always ,tying the tzitzit was a mixture of the holy and the silly. I was able to get Linda’s daughter to understand the knots she would be doing by saying the words “ Chinese Staircase”. The daughter had spend hours making friendship bracelets on the hour long commute by  bus on the way to an arts camp for several summers. She was expert. Her brother, did fine once he understood it was a knot he used back stage in the theatre. The kids gave their parents pointers. The tzitzit were, after not very long, tied. This tallit is a bit gra...

I know, I ought to be posting photos of Linda’s tallit completed. It isn’t quite done. it needs about another hour’s worth of work. I’m  a little too tired to do it today without making a mistake that I will regret. I will get back to work  on Linda’s tallit after Shabbat.Sunday, Linda’s family shows up and we all tie the tzitzit together. I used to work with Linda’s husband, and I know their now adult kids, from infanthood. It will be nice tying the tzitzit with all of them. I did work on the beginnings of this tallit that I’m calling The Bride’s tallit. it is being made by a man, as a gift for his bride. The groom and I have had a couple of meetings on Skype.  He pulled out his beloved’s favorite scarves and showed them to his web-cam.  I am working on making the stripes look like rivers. I made a stencil out of Bristol board and applied the color with Shiva paint sticks. Doing this kind of work is the same satisfying feeling  you have when you a...

I know that lots of people take sewing clothing as a serious endeavor. I don’t. For me, making a garment is a little like doing a doodle, but in fabric. During Passover, I took this book out of the library . I took it out, mostly, so my library would see that there is a demand for sewing books and hopefully order more sewing books for the collection. It’s not a bad book.In addition to lots of instructions for sewing with a pattern, there were also some nice garment diagrams. One of the diagrams that looked worth trying out was one for a raglan sleeved peasant dress. I had just ordered a mystery bundle from http://www.fabricmartfabrics.com/ . One of the goodies in the bundle was this rayon abstract print. I thought that the drapey rayon abstract print would be perfect for attempting the dress. Using my serger, the dress came together really quickly. I decided to use a fairly wide ( 1/2 inch) elastic at the neck. I had seem some of the Japanese sewing magazines using a wider than one ...

Passover is over, and it’s time focus on real life again.I spent part of yesterday constructing the stripes for Shaun’s magical red tallit. The text painted on the stripes are often used as magical incantations, but they come from Psalms. Shaun loves rich colors that vibrate against one another ( so do I). The diagonal stripes are made out of tie silk from a Fabric Mart mystery bundle. It’s heavy, heavy silk. I only had a little bit, maybe 1/4 yard but by cutting it on the diagonal. I was able to stretch the little bit of fabric . I had purchased several spools of decorative threads in various shades of red. You can see that I’m making good use of those threads.  The red printed paisley ribbon just pops on the magenta noil. The stripes are nearly done and need to be inset into the base fabric of the tallit. I took the photos on top of the base fabric ( a silk/hemp from Dharma Trading). The wild colors in this tallit are exactly why I adore working with clients so much. I proba...