sarah in nyc

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One of the truly great things about living in New York is that despite the fact that the garment district is smaller each time I go, there are still specialty businesses that cater to those of us who sew.  There are stores that sell nothing but zippers. There are stores that sell only notions. If you want to get a length of fabric pleated you can bring it a pleater who can pleat your fabric in any number of pleating patterns. A couple of years ago my friend Anne Marie and I wandered from the selling floor to the factory end of a trimming business. They were making multi stranded upholstery cording. We were transfixed by the process run on machinery that must have been a century old. The owners of the shop chased us out. They were horrified to find us in the factory. We could have stayed and watched all day. Today I went down to Jonathan Embroidery to get the buttonholes made for the kittle. I had called them earlier in the week to get a sense of the pricing for six buttonh...

Yesterday my husband and I had plans. I woke up sick, so the plans were not followed. Instead I tended to my gross cold and worked on the kittle. Amazon.com Widgets My husband went to the storage locker that houses the STUFF from his parents' home. He came home with a giant bag and told me that I would love what he had brought home. My husband knows me well. My husband brought home a giant shopping bag filled with photos. I will share just a few with you today. Some of the photos were really old. This is Velvel Krupnick, my husband's great grandfather, and his wife whose name we do not know. Velvel was a miller who came from Tulchin which is now in the Ukraine. At first i assumed that both of them were old when this photo was taken, but the longer I looked at their smooth, unlined faces, I realize that they were both probably younger than I am now when they sat for this photograph. This is Velvel's son, Leib, Louis in English,my husband's grandfather. Louis e...

the sound-track for my labors. Amazon.com Widgets Shabbat Shalom!

Many years ago my husband introduced me to a friend who could barely read Hebrew and yet he studied Talmud pretty seriously with his rabbi. My experiences in the world of sewing are pretty comparable. I have some skills that most people would think of as being on the advanced side -- I draft clothing, I know lots of high level embellishment skills. Amazon.com Widgets On the other hand. there are lots of skills that any one who took an old fashioned sewing class in high school would have learned  that I have never attempted (and completely terrify me). The lopsided nature of my sewing skills is what is putting this kittle together so difficult for me.  I make all nearly all of my clothing, but I have never made a shirt collar. I have never made a button stand. I have never made a buttonhole. The collar has been a big worry.  I have assigned puzzling it out to a corner of my brain and the problem has been simmering away. Today I attacked it. The collar does not have...

Yesterday I began  the scary task of attaching the ribbons of text to the kittle. I tend not to be someone who uses pins. I know that most of the world will pin stuff that needs to be sewn straight before sewing it in place. If I use pins I am guaranteed to stab myself in a horrible way. Most of the time I manage by holding things tightly, and most of the time, that method works. Amazon.com Widgets My hold tight method failed miserably. It failed when I chose to do a complicated multi part stitch that ended up being sewn completely crooked onto the shoulder yoke of the kittle. It took over an hour to unpick 21 inches of sewing. Let me repeat that, it took over an hour to unpick 21 inches of sewing. That was not a fun hour. I then turned to the emporium that saves me from nearly all emergencies, the dollar store downstairs from my apartment. The dollar store always carries iron on hem tape. I thought that I could baste  the ribbon to the kittle with the hem tape. Well, ...

I am known in the sewing universe for being able to whip up a dress quickly. This is not a Trumpian exaggeration but most of my dresses have been whipped up in less than 30 minutes. A few of them have taken a couple of hours to make and some have been made in 15-20 minutes. I tend to cut into fabric without a pattern and just make the thing work. Amazon.com Widgets This kittle is a very different sort of a project. I have made two muslins so far. I have drafted and re-drafted the pattern. I keep thinking about issues of fit, how men's bodies are built and how a kittle is actually used and worn. One complication for me is that this is a garment for a man. this is not my usual wheelhouse. the other issue is that the recipient is a man who cares about is particular about fit. A kittle is by it's nature big and floppy.  The paradox of creating a well fitting  kittle  ( loose but not) was making me crazy. I had tried a close fitting draft of the kittle and knew it wa...

A few weeks ago I got an email from the Torah reading coordination at my minyan. They needed someone to read tomorrow's haftara,  The reading from the prophets that follows the Torah reading. I took a look at the haftarah and realized that it was deeply familiar. Amazon.com Widgets The reading is short, only 9 verses, ( Isiah 54, verses 1-9). It is a haftarah that is often given to kids with learning issues. I claimed the haftarah only to be told that someone else had grabbed it before I had responded. Last week I got another email. The person who had made their first dibs on that haftara was unable to to do it. Was I willing to to take it on. Of course I was! So now a bit of my history with this haftara. There was a boy in my community who was born with developmental disabilities. When he was ten or eleven, his grandparents approached my parents and said that they wanted to be sure that Barry had a bar-mitzvah. My mother began teaching Barry how to read Hebrew.  I was...

I begin this post with a bit of lovely. Amazon.com Widgets I was struck by this beautiful spot of light on my kitchen floor when I realized that the source of the light was  Sun shining through this bottle half filled with water. This bottle began life as a whiskey bottle. It now holds water to fill my iron. For the past few decades I have used the little plastic pitcher than came with an iron that has long since bit the dust. it was a nice shape for filling the iron but had an unpleasant tendency to tip over. The whiskey bottle is much more attractive than the plastic pitcher and is much too bottom heavy to tip. I think that the incidents of my cursing during ironing has been reduced to just a fraction of what it was before. And now, the end of an era. One of the first fabric stores I ever shopped in in New York was Paron. They used to have more than one store. I used to shop at their store on 57th street when there used to be several fabric stores just east of Carneg...

I am trying to work out the sizing of the kittle that I have been working on. My dear friend Welmoed was kind enough to create a shirt draft for me base on the measurements of the man who is to wear the kittle.  I tried the muslin  on my son and  it's just way too small. The kittle that I had purchased, even at a size medium is just huge. The sleeve cuffs hang off of my normal sized son way past his hands. I am thinking about how to essentially combine in pattern form the much too big store bought kittle and the too small computer drafted shirt pattern. While the creaky wheels in my brain are trying to solve this problem, I decided to give myself a small home dec project to complete. Several of our pillowcases have recently died. It was time to add some more to our linen closet stash. Lucky for me,  Fabric Mart  was trying to get rid of some quilting cotton. This black and white printed cotton was crazy on sale. I purchased a few yards and got to wo...

On Mother's Day we had eaten a spectacular meal at Angela's restaurant in Boro Park. We decided to end the last gasp of summer with another meal there. Angela's  is a kosher Uzbeki meat restaurant.  The decor, despite this chandelier, is very simple. The food, mostly skewered meats is great. The menu is mostly in Russian.  The waitress,  reminds me of Gilda Radner doing a bit as a waitress in an Uzbeki restaurant.  While the restaurant is physically in New York City once you walk in, you are in an Uzbeki restaurant. Just go with the flow. Most of what you expect in a restaurant just does not apply here. If you want fancy service, go elsewhere.  Gilda will tell you what you need to eat. You can refuse some of the offerings, but basically Gilda is in charge.  We ordered one house salad, not pictured and one pickled salad. The pickled cherry tomatoes were particularly adored by my family . The restaurant pickles their own vegetables. ...