sarah in nyc

This morning, when I looked out of my living room window, I saw something quite magical. cascades of leaves were swirling by my 6th floor window. Usually, we are a bit cut off from the wonders of nature. The trees only reach as high as the fourth floor, seeing those dancing leaves just made my day.   Now I’m changing the topic to that of money.  Many years ago when I began doing this work, someone who had been in the business of making stuff and charging for it told me that I need to figure out an hourly fee for my time, figure out the cost of the materials used and then double that price to get to a wholesale price. One doubles that price to get to the retail price of  an item.   I sort of follow that practice, except that I charge my clients the wholesale price, rather than the retail price for an item. So, yes, I know I undercharge for my work.   Last week I was contacted by a potential client about making a tallit for her daughter. She suggested ...

Our dear friends Meyer and Suzanne and a new grand daughter. This baby lives out side of Boston so these soft  New England colors are just right. The jacket is made out of a  cotton quilted throw I had purchased at Bed Bath and Beyond for making into other things. I had made an apron out of some of the throw. All of my old sewing books show jackets in this shape for babies. In fact, I had made this baby’s first cousin a jacket based on the same diagram. One advantage of using the quilted throw is that it is already lined. I realized as I was making this jacket  that experience has taught me that finishing off the hems before I sew the jacket together just makes life easier. I bound the front edges with foulard silk. Unlike my usual way of sewing on bindings, I sewed the binding to the inside of the jacket first, and then turned it to the outside and stitched it with the decorative diamond stitch. I stitched in the ditch on the front. And si...

    Most people assume that skills like sewing are lovingly passed down from mother to daughter.   This photo shows that those skills were not passed down. This photo of my mother, was taken by her Tanta Becky’s step son Harry. It’s one of very few photos taken of my mother during her childhood.   My grandmother made the dress. Please note that the two halves of the collar don’t match.  I don’t think that my grandmother notched those curves, so the collar lays funny.This was the one child’s dress that my grandmother knew how to make. The fabric for the dress came from Uncle Lou who owned a dress factory at 555 8th Avenue. My mother had two identical dresses made out of the same fabric.She wore each for 3 days and had a different dress for Shabbat.   When my mother looks at this picture she always comments, “ Don’t I look like a welfare child???”.  Actually, she was on welfare when this photo was taken.

Earlier this week, Alonzo had asked if his brother, Dave, could join my class. Dave is a 45 year old mute retarded man. I agreed to have Dave in the class. I brought along extra velvet  so participants could practice  before they began to stencil on the actual piece. I was a little worried about having Dave in the class, but I figured that I could figure out something for him to do in case the task at hand was beyond his skills. Most of the other class members were away, having begun their Thanksgiving early. I got Dave stenciling on the scrap velvet.  He had no trouble at all. So when Ruth came in I asked Dave it it was difficult use the stencil, he grunted an enthusiastic “ No!”. So, Ruth who is usually timid, got into working fear- free. The three of us had a blast working together. Next week we add the lettering.

I’m teaching this class at my synagogue. CREATE A PIECE OF SYNAGOGUE ART IN FABRIC With Fabric Artist Sarah Jacobs In this workshop, we’ll create a “Bein Gavra” – the fabric covering that is placed over the Torah between aliyot — for the Sanctuary. The words bein gavra literally mean in between the people, meaning between the olim. The goal of these sessions is to create something beautiful that will both enhance and reflect our experience of being close to the Torah. We’ll spend the first session or two exploring our relationship to Torah both as individuals and as a community, and using that discussion to together design and create a piece that is meaningful and beautiful, as well as practical. The remainder of the sessions will be spent working on making the “Bein Gavra”. This workshop is open to all – adults and children over the age of 10. No sewing or fabric art experience is required. 5 Tuesdays 7:30-9 pm Beginning October 25 Materials fee $15 ...

Today was my synagogue's artist studio tour.  I reconfigured my apartment and set out my work. My apartment was in the middle of the tour. I guess the artists at the beginning of the tour gave really long lectures about their work, so by the time they had been to two studios they dropped out of the tour.  So it was a whole lot of work , for a pretty disappointing showing.

I taught myself how to sew. I didn’t have the wise hands or words of a more experienced sewer helping me along.  I learned what I can now do from books and from making lots of really stupid mistakes. Many skills that others learn in home- ec, or in a moment from someone more experienced have been mastered by me, only after banging m,y head against the problem often and over a period of a decade or two. Mitering, doing that lovely turn on a trim that ends up with a perfect diagonal line in the corner was for many years a skill that was woefully beyond me. I would have to stop at the corner, take a deep breath and then come up with a solution that wasn’t all that ugly and messy. I did the best I could. I used to read and re read the directions in my various sewing books with as much care as I used to give to parsing a segment of Talmud. There are several different fail safe methods of achieving a perfect miter. I failed at all of the various method. This latest batch of chal...

My synagogue’s artists’ open studio tour is on Sunday. I’m working away to be sure that I have work to show ( and to sell). You can read more about the event here http://www.anschechesed.org/web/guest/upper-west-side-artists-studio-tour-nov.-20 This challah cover design is the first I came up with.  I used to applique all of the elements, the sun, the moon and the lettering. The text comes from the end of the creation story, and is also the beginning of the Kiddush, ‘ It was evening and it was day.” It was hugely time consuming. I probably made something like  fifty cents an hour on those early pieces. I have taken a break from this design for a few years.  After playing with the same design for fifteen years, it becomes a bit less compelling. A couple of weeks ago we had dinner at the home of a friend. She had an earlier iteration of this challah cover. My husband asked me to make more of them.  he has a tremendous fondness for this design. I always like to...

This is what I gave my youngest for lunch. Inside the foil wrapped package is a cheddar cheese sandwich on home baked challah. The eye balls and lips are left over from Halloween. This image made me laugh all day long. Meanwhile, my daughter has an interview tomorrow at DVF. She called me to help her put together an outfit that would work for who they are. Of course, my daughter does not own any DVF  clothing. My daughter is interviewing for an internship in accessories. We looked at the current line of scarves online.  ( the DVF images from http://www.dvf.com/ ) We also looked at the dresses. They had a late 1970’s vibe. My daughter didn’t own quite the right dress. I did have a dress that a neighbor had given me that was the right look. My daughter tried it on. It looked dowdy.  I  ran the dress through the serger cutting the dress down by a couple of inches at each side seam. The result was this: My daughter was happy with the reshaped dress. ...

I don’t know if it was the result of subliminal suggestion or just the fact that it was nippy out but I did end up wearing corduroy on Corduroy Day. The corduroy had arrived as part of a http://www.fabricmartfabrics.com/   mystery bundle. It’s a cotton cotton stretch corduroy, so no there are closures in the dress.  I added the dark hem several months later because the dress was simply too short for me to wear comfortably. This is one of the dresses that I made while feeling nostalgic for my childhood. This looks like something that one of my teachers might have worn in the early 1970’s. Given that I went to an Orthodox day school, my teachers would have worn such a dress with a blouse underneath or with short sleeves. If this would have been worn by one of my younger and cooler teachers the dress might have been worn paired with knee length dark leather boots with a chunky heel. Some garments are glam. This dress is not. This is a good work around the house and run e...

I live in New York, one can assume that I love Chinese food. I do. Unfortunately, my body has trouble with salt. If I eat salty food then I can’t wear shoes. Since my daughter has spent so much time in China, she really loved Chinese food. earlier this year , we discovered that the combination of sesame oil and rice vinegar yields a flavor that feels Chinese, but still allows me to wear shoes Earlier this summer we all ( except for our youngest who still avoids vegetables) became to raw shredded cabbage dressed with sesame oil and rice vinegar. For Shabbat I’m roasting vegetables in the  magic combination. What else am I serving??? Meatballs which I made with  about 1/2 cooked and pureed vegetables. As long as there is barbecue sauce on top, my son will gobble them up. I’m also serving noodles and of course, challah. The challah has made my Friday far easier. Yesterday, I baked a loaf of bread to bring to a Shiva house. I had told my son that the bread was for our f...

Actuallym a better title would be, " Connecting with Family". This photo taken early in the last century is of my grandmother, Toba Weissglass. Toba came to the States in 1904 with her mother, Brana and her two younger sisters, Feige and Vechne. Toba's father and her brother, Lazer had arrived three or four years earlier. Feige died before she reached adulthood. Vechne died while my mother was pregnant with my oldest sister. My grandmother adored her older brother. I don't quite know why, but the two families drifted apart. I have been doing some work on family geneology for the past several years. I had come across the name of Lazer's son in a synagogue bulletin that I had found by way of Google. A few weeks ago, I wrote to the rabbi of the synagogue explaining my quest. This week I have been speaking to my cousins. We have been exchanging emails and photographs. It's a powerful thing to recieve a photo of a person who I have never seen before, who ...

Up close ( and fuzzy) This is the back of the march. The march begins a block ahead About an hour ago I hear a huge din, people shouting, drums beating. I went to the window to see what the commotion was. OWS organized a march from the top of Manhattan to Wall Street. I took some photos from my window,. The view of the sidewalk is blocked by the still thick foliage. The crowd was REALLY loud. It wasn’t a very large crowd. The marchers loosely took up two north-south blocks. But they had LOTS of drums and were walking REALLY slowly. To tell you the truth, over the years I have seem much longer marches down Broadway.They were accompanied by far less media coverage. From across the street.These folks are walking slowly. I took the photo above, waited for the elevator ( a long wait) gor downstairs, chatted with the doorman and then got to the corner. Street trafic goes on arund OWS march

Yesterday, Tess came by to work on her tallit. Yes, she was pleased with the base color of the tallit. (In the same color family as my dining room walls, but not quite as flat and dark a color.) Sky fabric over dyed silk twill Tess’s task yesterday was to paint the strip of ocean and the strip of sky on silk organza. My job, particularly when working with  kids of bar- mitzvah age, is to demystify the process of making things.  I have found that too often that when people teach others how to make things they are so full of dire warnings that it makes it hard to proceed  without being in something of a panic. Maybe it comes from my years teaching day care in a crunchy granola day care center. Also if you have pretty silk with a wonderful texture and choose pretty colors to work with, as long as the entire piece of fabric is filled with color, you just can’t go wrong. I kept reminding Tess when she would look at me for more direction, “ You just can’t mess this up.”...

I collect old sewing books. I particularly love old sewing books that show how to draft patterns. I bought this book online last week. It’s a winner. it was published in 1930 and was written by Evalyn Shackelford. It’s published by the White Sewing Machine Company. Lots of sewing books from the era show various methods of making pockets  or using specialized sewing machine feet. For me the value of a sewing book , like a cook book comes from the number of keeper ideas in the book.  this book has several. This method of creating a strip of button holes is brilliant. I guess it made a whole lot of sense in the pre button holes made on the sewing machine era. I think that button hole strips like this, made with contrasting binding would look really terrific on a garment. This book also shows a particularly clever way to create bias yardage that does not require a whole lot of cleverness on the part of the user. The book has a curious feature, which is drafts for garment...

Candle lighting is a foundational mitzvah for women. In traditional Judaism women are exempted from nearly all time- bound mitzvot/commadments.  Candle lighting is an exception to that rule. Usually, women cover their heads when they say the blessing over the candles. When my sisters and I got married my mother went to a fancy lace store in the garment district, bought a beautiful length of lace and finished the edges. We each received it as a pre wedding gift. Mine was beautiful re-embroidered lace. I put it on the first Shabbat of my married life. I felt that while I was old enough to get married, I wasn’t old enough to wear that beautiful piece of lace. So I put it away and began the custom of lighting candles with my head uncovered. The first Shabbat after my daughter was born, I tried that lace head covering again. I still wasn’t old enough to wear it. That beautiful length of lace remains put away. My mother used to light candles quickly. She said the blessing an...

Well, I now have 11 Havdalah bags complete. Each one has it own charms. I completed them all yesterday, today I trimmed al of the stray threads. At the moment they are all packed away in Zip- Lok bags in my completed work suitcase. Hopefully, the suitcase will soon be bursting with new work. I’m nearly done with a new piece. If I complete it before Shabbat, I will post the photos. Like the Havdalah Bags, it’s a new way to look at an old tradition. That’s all I’m saying for now.

Today, I got about as close to production sewing as I ever get. In two weeks, my synagogue is doing an artists’ studio tour to showcase the work of synagogue embers who are also artists. I am happy to have been selected to be part of the day. Participants pay a fee to visit the various studios and are welcome to make purchases while they are on the tour. I may not be the smartest business woman in the world, but I do know that people are more likely to buy lower priced items. Thus, today’s flurry of havdalah bags. Yup, I invented these.  When they are done they will be filled with sweet smelling spices. you hold the bag when you recite havdalah, the prayers you recite are right on the bag. Today I made the fronts of eleven bags. That is a multi staged process. I photo transferred the text eleven times onto a long strip of blue silk shantung.  Then I began to build the borders. Many of the fabric strips come from pieces that I worked on recently, or not so recently. I su...