Making progress but first a note to my readers

Apparently, Google, the owner of the Blogger platform is discontinuing Feedburner. Some of you have been getting updates about new posts through Feedburner. If I were a bit more up on these matters I would have figured out a different system for you to get notices about the activity here. So, I am doing nothing. I have gotten several invitations from companies I know nothing about asking me to use their subscriber services. If you have suggestions about a service to use that works and isn't a scam, let me know. Otherwise, just stop by. I usually post at least once a week and usually more often.

I have been working away on the baby quilt. For those of you for whom reading this blog is not the most important thing in your life, (meaning everyone) I will give you a bit of background.

My client is the aunt to be for a baby boy due to be born this August. My client's mother died last year. The mom was an extraordinary human being and was a fabulous grandmother to my client's children. Part of the grief my client is feeling is knowing that her new nephew won't have his grandmother in his life.

During our initial chat, my client said that she wanted to have me make a baby quilt out of her mother's old textiles. My client suggested that I build the quilt out of squares of her mother's fabrics. I loved the idea of symbolically wrapping this baby with his grandmother's love. I didn't love the idea of just making quilt squares.

I remember when the idea of creating a quilt out of squares of old symbolic squares of fabric seemed new and exciting. "How about if every kindergartener makes a square about something they learned this year?" As someone who sews, I have been roped into putting together far too many of those school auction quilts-- there are many things I would rather do than sew a bunch of fabric of various weights together into squares and turn that into a quilt. My mother sometimes would rate unpleasant jobs on a toilet scale..how many dirty toilets would she rather clean than do the task. I would rate-making such a quilt as a twenty toilet job.

Instead of the dreaded squares, I suggested using the mom's fabrics to create,(because mom was an educator and a child psychologist) into a series of shelves filled with books and toys. Lucky for both of us, my client loved my idea. I have been working on some of the individual elements and yesterday I began constructing the shelves the stuff I have been making will sit on.

The wood-grained fabric and the pale blue background were purchased for this project. Everything else is made up of Mama's clothing.

The book, Mr. Son-Shine- is what Mama used to call the father of the new baby. I am making a few

of these take off's of the Mr. Man series based on qualities my client admires about her brother. The sun itself is made out of m

Mama's towel and a t-shirt of hers and a mix of hand and machine embroidery.

The car is made out of a napkin and the car windows out of a rugby shirt. The wheels are constructed out of a towel and a t-shirt. The frog comes from a pajama shirt. I will be sprinkling more of the frogs through the quilt.

I am working on the composition of the second shelf.

The Snowy Day has been made out of an array of Mama fabric. The snow is the background of the frog pajamas. The darker pink is a Lanz nightgown

The lavender is the collar of a rugby shirt, the orange is a towel. The little shed is a bit of a pillow cover and the little boy's snowsuit is part of a pajama leg.

The fire truck is made up mostly of the same pajama leg. The truck window is a different rugby shirt. The light on top of the fire truck is from a piece of gingham. The tires are made out of a t-shirt with Lanz nightgown hubs.

Noah's Ark is of course still in progress. I may decide to redo the ark on a larger scale.

Figuring out each element of this quilt is kind of a blast. Each bit is like solving a really hard crossword puzzle. There are two more shelves to be constructed and populated. The various toys and books are in various stages of completion.

Why yes! I will share my progress!

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 ...

Lisa LareeJuly 29, 2021 at 8:13 PM
I've been through several feedburner-type services over the years; the first two I left because they went away, the third one I left because the service actually solicited my support for a cause that I cannot in any way agree with...the fourth one, Feedly, works well enough even if the free version has a cap on the number of feeds that can be subscribed to. I seem to remember being irritated with it in the beginning but I've adjusted and now I don't remember what it was that I didn't like. It does what I need it to do.

sarah in nyc

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