Three grouses and three dresses

Grouse #1

Today I baked The Great Wall of Pita. This meant that the oven was baking away at 425 for a big chunk of the day.

Grouse #2

Our dryer was on the fritz for over a week and finally got fixed on Thursday. Today our washing machine stopped working mid load.

Grouse #3

My sister did the lions share ( more than a lion’s share-- a lion pride’s share) of clearing out my mother’s apartment. We were left with a large amount of art that needs to be sold. I told my sister that I would take care of it.

Sunday evening it all arrived at my house. I felt so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it that I was sort of immobilized by it yesterday and got basically nothing done all day. Today I hid some of it away , and will hide more away this evening, so at least the dining room table is clear. (If any of you have any connections to art dealers who deal with Jewish and Israeli art, let me know)

OK. That’s enough grousing for the moment. I do want to share three dresses that I have made over the last couple of weeks.

Dress #1

I think I had begun this dress two summers ago. I decided to make a one seamed dress out of Ikea fabric. I had gotten what had felt like hopelessly stuck over installing the giant plastic zipper in the back seam so let the dress lie fallow.

At the moment my problems with the dress had seemed insurmountable. Looking at the dress two years later I was able to address them well enough to complete the dress.

I know the dress is wrinkled. ( There is a forum out there for criticizing sewing blogs and they often gripe when people show wrinkled garments and at as if they are fine. This dress is wrinkled, I know.) The fit on this dress is a bit wonky on me. The hips are cut a bit snug on my hips.

Below is essentially my cutting diagram for the dress.

Aside from the shoulder seam, the only seam is the center back seam. I cut fish eye darts at the sides to create some waist shaping. The dress reminds me of childhood summers.

Dress #2

This dress was stupidly easy to make. This is the basic shape.

The best thing about it is the fabric.

It’s a cool cotton/nylon woven. The dress shape reminds me of something you might see in a “Simple to Sew” article from the 1970’s. It’s dreadful without the belt, so it won’t be worn without one, ever.

Dress #3

This dress is also all about the fabric. The green lace was a super bargain purchase from Fabric Mart during one of their sales on lace.

I had made the basic dress and had dithered on the lining fabric. I was thinking that I wanted to line the dress in a dark color. I wimped out and went for the expected.

It’s lined with a white puckered knit that I fell stupidly in love with at Paron.

I had initially made the lining a bit too short so I added an extension today. I know the seam is less than lovely, but I don’t think it will be visible through the heavy lace.

The diagram for this dress looks like this.

It’s a tank style dress with big triangular godets added to the waist for movement and shape. the lining is fitted throughout and does not have the godets. The lining is attached only at the neckline and the armholes.

When I wore this dress to synagogue a couple of weeks ago a couple of people came up to me to tell me that there was no way I could have made this dress.

Hopefully I will soon get all of the art sold.

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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