Playing with a cool idea

A while ago ,I found a really interesting link on this blog. Julian Roberts, that is Julian, not Julia had an incredibly cool way to create visually complex yet easy to sew dresses. Julian is clearly a quirky guy. His website was open only two days a week so it wasn’t always easy to track his method down and try it. The other day I saw that the Julian Roberts book is now available as a PDF. I downloaded the book. It’s a space hog but completely fascinating.

Some of Julian's ideas are really easy to assimilate, others feel like trying to master advanced mathematics when you have trouble with simple arithmetic. But on one foot, his method starts with a long pillow case of fabric. You sort of randomly decide where the front and back bodices go, cut then out and then twist, and turn those bodices and stitch the dress together.

Here you see stage 1.

Here are two views of the finished dress. it can be worn front to back or inside out for various looks.

It actually looks somewhat better and more interesting on my actual body.

So what do I think about this dress construction method??? It’s a great way to create the sort of dress you need if you are suddenly invited to the very chic opening of a chic art gallery and need to make something in under an hour.

It’s the good beginning of a cool dress. The dress despite the appendages, is actually more flattering than one would expect. It’s easy enough to use the dress as a first draft and then stand in front of a mirror and adjust, pin and sew all of the hanging bits into something that is pretty wonderful, a sort of instant Charles James inspired dress.

The dress might be of rather limited utility, but it’s a nice idea to have in my quiver of quick dress ideas. It’s a little like a really nifty party trick. You wouldn’t want an entire evening of party tricks but once in a while, a cool party trick is nice a nice change of pace.

If I am ever invited to a party where all of the guests are too cool for words, and terrify me with their downtown fabulousness, I will definitely make this dress.

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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