A Dress Made Possible by the Internet

I take part in a few different sewing forums and discussions on the internet. It’s a nice way to discuss issues that may not be burning topics for the people I interact with in real life. My sewing buddies on the net are just the people to discuss the various attributes of various kind of interfacings or various ways to insert a zipper of fabric sources.

In a discussion of various fabrics we had all purchased in www.fabricmartfabrics.com mystery bundles, one person mentioned that she had purchased an orange printed cotton that she found hideous. She posted a photo of the said fabric. I loved it. I proposed a trade with fabric from a mystery bundle that didn’t suit me. The woman who hated this fabric had the gentle coloring that blonds often have. For her, the orange was quite hideous. It works with my coloring.

I did have a pale greenish taupe sweater knit in my stash that made me tired just looking at it. We agreed to a trade. she made a terrific hooded sweater out of the sweater knit. This orange cotton was sitting on my shelf waiting it’s turn to be turned into a dress.

My husband and I have been watching Mad Men. as you might expect, I have been in love with the clothing. I decided to make the sort of dress that Joan Holloway might have worn if she had dark hair and yellow based skin.

I used the Cal Patch book on pattern making to roughly guide my efforts. I could go through and list all of the short comings of my work, but I am not going to bother. I’m probably going to wear this dress to services on Saturday. It’s my father’s third yahrzeit. I realized working on this dress that it remind me of a very fancy dress my father bought for my mother to wear to my cousin Bonnie’s wedding. She and her husband Arne just celebrated their 50th anniversary last week.

And on a completely unrelated note. The Shabbat before we left for Israel I made couscous. We didn’t finish it. That couscous has been sitting in a container in the bottom of the fridge. It has transformed itself into a penicillin farm. I just couldn’t deal with opening that container. I asked my 15 year old to set a price for cleaning the container. He named a price. I was happy to meet it. he was happy to have the cash in his pocket.

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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