Little bits of sewing

Navah is one of the few people here in New York who knows me from childhood. She and her husband were several years younger than my parents. They were the cool grownups in my childhood memories.

I am wearing the blindingly white tights, Navah is wearing a cool peasant inspired maxi dress

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Navah has been needle pointing tallit bags for her husband, her son and her grandchildren. I would guess that the first of the bags was in the planning stages when the above photo was taken.( This was the great hey-day of needlepoint. My own adventures in needlepoint began right around this time.

For the last several years I have been providing the lettering for Navah's tallit bags.

This time after completing her bag Navah asked me to also construct the bag. While I had done lots of needlepoint from the ages of 11 to 18 or so, finishing off needlepoint was not something I had done before.

I found several sites that explained how to finish the piece off and create the bag, they all seemed to suggest using piping. Making piping was also new to me.

I used heavy yarn as the filler for the piping and some suiting that I had made a skirt out of a few years ago as the outer fabric for the piping.Piping is actually a less terrifying enterprise than I had thought it would be. Here is the bag complete.

And here is another shot of the piping because I am so tickled that I could actually do it.

I also repaired and cleaned an ark curtain from my synagogue yesterday. The piece was designed and made about 25 years ago by two women I really admire, one of whom was my calligraphy teacher, and was made in memory of a dear friend.

The piece is problematic in a variety of ways. there were some tears that needed to be fixed and it was quite filthy.

I figured that I would clean the piece by putting it in my dryer with a damp towel. The schmutz all ends up on the towel and the piece ends up clean.

I first did the mending that had to get done.

I discovered much to my chagrin that there wasn't quite enough seam allowance between the underlay and overlay of the appliqued Ultrasuede. I did the best that I could. i also noticed that the sewing machine that was used to sew this piece HATED working with Ultrasuede. There were lots of skipped stitches.

The piece is now hanging up in it's place. I can say that it is clean. I am not so happy with the results. I weighted the piece a bit and perhaps the magic of gravity will do it's job.

I also have had a dress itching my my head for the past couple of months.. I had purchased a cool Missoni type knit that was mused by the dress designer Shoshannah. I wanted to make it into a dress.

I got a little playful during the process and ended up with this.

I think I had seen some Missoni dresses that played with the directions of the knit. I may add a bit more to the short side of the hem.

It's one of those dresses that sits on the fence between looking cool and arty and a crazy mess. I will see what it feels like on.

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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