Creating an ocean and a summer dress

The meals were eaten. The shofar was blown and now it is time to squeeze in as much work as I can before we leave for Israel to visit our son--right after Yom Kippur.

A few weeks ago I met with a new client. Bonnie grew up on the coast of southern Massachusetts and now lives just north of Boston on the sea. Bonnie is the daughter of someone who ran a textile mill so fabric is in her bones.

When we met she realized that she wanted the stripes on the tallit to look like the ocean of her childhood home. While the body of Bonnie's tallit would be made out of a lovely raw silk, the stripes would be painted on a smooth faced silk.

I felt fortunate when I found a length of super heavyweight silk charmeuse that was left over from a tallit I had made a while back. Before I began painting, I spent a long, long time looking at images of the ocean off the coast of southern Massachusetts, actually the beach I went to most often as a child. When the colors were set in my head I got to work.

I pleated the silk and bound it using rubber bands. I then began applying the dye. Here is the silk bundle dyed and mostly dry.

I couldn't open the fabric until it was completely dry.

When I opened the fabric bundle, it looked like this.

I know, it doesn't look that impressive but I wanted the dark lines of color as the base layer of color.

I loaded up watered down fabric dyes into small spray bottles and began spraying dye onto the the silk.

This is getting closer to what I wanted. But I kept going.

After more layers of droplets of color you can almost get the sense of sunlight on the ocean.

The darker bits give the sense of the movement of the waves without getting too literal.

I pulled a thread of the raw silk that will be the main body of the tallit so I could precisely cut it to size.

I edged the silk with the serger so it doesn't unravel. I will see how much of this tallit I can get done before I leave.

Here you see the painted silk on top of the raw silk.

I had been so crazed with work that I hadn't focused very much on our Israel travels. I finally checked the extended forecast and realized that it will be hot and since we are staying in Ashkelon, likely muggy as well. I had planned to just take a bunch of knit dresses. But given that it will be in the mid 80s I realized that I would need another woven cotton dress.

I poked around in my stash and found a Marimekko bed-skirt that had part of the treasure trove of excellent fabrics that my pal Alix had given me from her late mother's home. I unpicked the hems and made myself a new hot weather dress. Here it is unbelted.

I will probably wear it belted.

I had used this dress as my pattern.

The black and white Marimekko print was based on my take on this Norma Kamali dress.

This had been my take on the brilliantly cut Norma Kamali dress.

When I want a dress in this shape I just fold one of the dresses based on this shape in 1/4s and lay it on top of fabric that is folded in 1/4s , cut around the dress and stitch it up. The sequin dress is staying home on this trip.

Hopefully I can get both more sewing done before I leave town.

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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