Lessons Learned While Not Paying Attention

I got a call today from my friend Elisheva. She had an odd sewing job for me to do. She wasn’t sure if it was quite in my wheelhouse, but thought it was worth asking.

Elisheva had inherited a mink collar/stole and hat and they both needed to be re lined, would I be willing to do the job?

I wasn’t sure if this was something I could do until I took a look. Elisheva came by with the hat and the stole. I decided to tackle the stole first. It was really nice mink. My grandfather was a furrier and my mother is a big fur critic. That is, when we would walk down the street together, she would critique the fur coats.

“ Ugh, she’s wearing a mink, but it’s so cheap. Look how stiff it is!”

“ Rabbit fur!That’s junk!”

“Oooh! That’s a nice fur.”

“Her tush is too fat for that fur, she needs to either get a new one or just wear a different coat.”

I didn’t think that I was actually paying attention to all of my mother’s critiques, but her lessons on the finer points of fur have actually sunk in.

The lining of the fur collar had disappeared . What was left was a layer of cotton batting that had gotten fairly grotty. Elisheva and I realized that the batting added a feeling of luxury to the collar.

I decided that I would replace the cotton with an old wool sweater.

Again lessons that I hadn’t really paid attention to paid off. Every old sewing book I own has a chapter on how to make tailored clothing. I have skipped reading that chapter in every one of those books. I do look at the pictures though.

Men’s suits are designed with the same intent as those molded foam chests on super hero Halloween costumes. suits are designed to create the illusion of a perfectly formed male body. Like the super hero suits, that illusion is created with layers of padding. Good men’s suits are not made with layers of foam inside like superhero suits.

Rather they are made with thin layers of wool batting that creates that idealized shape. Each of my swing books shows how you pad stitch the layers together so the sunken chested man can look manly. I did the same with my old lambs wool short sleeved jeweled neck sweater. I built up layers of sweater to create the feeling of luxury inside the collar.

Next I had to sew in a lining. At first I had thought I would use some wonderful heavy striped tie silks that I have in my stash. The shape of the collar made it hard to work with the bold stripes. The lining would have looked distorted.

I ended up using this fun chartreuse and pink ribbed dotted silk. The pattern was a bit more forgiving. Yes, I did all of the stitching by hand. I also added a fur hook and eye to the front.

Here is the finished stole lining side out.

And now here it is fur side out.

I never would have thought that such a fur collar might be something that might be a wardrobe staple. But I could see this making a plain coat or dress into something special. This collar could make a plain black dress in to an evening dress.

I think I may have read too much fashion advice from my 1940’s sewing books. soon I will be describing garments as being “cunning”.

I still have the hat to tackle. The hat offers a whole new set of problems to solve. I like using the problem solving side of my head.

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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