Currently on my plate

My cousin is getting married in a week and a half. It’s a black tie event. The bride comes from the land of sparkle, Long Island.

Several months ago my youngest was looking over my shoulder as I was internet fabric shopping. This sequin encrusted fabric was on sale. I was on the fence about buying it.

My son strongly encouraged me to buy it.

I have had this fabric sitting in a bag on the shelf for months but I haven’t done a thing about making the dress. I had been mentally designing this dress, thinking about and discarding a variety of options.

Because this fabric is sheet I decided to layer it over a tan scuba knit.

I know it’s a boring color but it’s meant to be that way. The fabric has so much going on.

After a whole bunch of dithering, I decided on the dress design.

It’s a really simple off the shoulder column dress. I have often mistakenly cut the necks of my dresses too wide and have inadvertently ended up with an off the shoulder dress. I sewed up the scuba fabric lining and my husband liked the shape of the dress and liked the off the shoulder neckline on me. The fabric is so busy that I figured that the simpler the better in terms of design. You can’t get too much simpler in terms of silhouette.

If I had been smarter I would have ordered more fabric. But I’m not smarter, so I have had to resort to come creative cutting. The dress back is seamed, partially to create a bit of shape and mostly so I will be able to eke out enough of the sequin fabric.

All of the beige scuba is cut out and two thirds of the sequined fabric is cut and edge stitched to the scuba lining. My dining room looks like it has snowed sequins.

Hopefully I will get the dress completed by the end of this week.

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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