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Not Rocket Science

 Many years ago my wise friend Sharon told me that every time she closed a real-estate deal she would buy herself a piece of jewelry. I loved the idea of rewarding yourself after completing a piece of hard work.  I had been working and kind of a crazy pace since before Passover. It was time to reward myself.


Many of us who grew up in tune with the Jewish calendar know that it is traditional to have a new garment for the Jewish New Year.  I wanted to make myself a new dress. I have lots of lovely yardage comfortably ageing in my closet. I had purchased a length of black and white vertically striped lace a while back from Fabric Mart. (What do you get for clicking on the link? great deals on fabric. What do I get? No kickbacks, just the happy knowledge that you too can get excellent fabric for a great price)


I had an idea for a dress, lay the fabric out on my floor and cut. Attempt #1 was a failure. Attempt #2 was not.


It's a simple dress made out of complicated  looking fabric. The dress itself is a simple sheath with two godets at the hem.


The godets (triangles of fabric added to the seams) add a bit of swing and fullness to the hem. I was able to perfectly match the pattern at the seam ---on one side.



I was not as successful at pattern  matching on the other seam.






I show the dress here with a black full slip underneath. I used the scalloped selvedge edge of the fabric as the dress hem.


This was an easy-peasy dress to make.  For those of you who are interested, I edged the neckline with a piece of black netting, stitched to the right side of the dress, notched and then turned the netting to the inside and topstitched. The sleeves were turned and stitched for the hem.

The next few days will be filled with baking and cooking. I was mentally going through my wardrobe to see what white-ish dress I could wear for Yom Kippur.

I realized with a slap to my forehead that if I wore a white slip rather than a black one the dress would read more white. So below is my Rosh Hashanah dress ready for Yom Kippur.


This is probably more than you want to know about my underpinnings, so that is enough of THAT conversation.


We are eating left-overs from Rosh Hashanah for Shabbat but as soon as I finish typing this post I will air fry a bunch of vegetables.


Shabbat Shalom!


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