sarah in nyc

 There are a few small accomplishments that I have done in the last couple of days. I had purchased this fabric a couple of weeks ago. it was incredibly inexpensive. It appealed to me because it looks like patchwork made on a serger--I know a completely sewing geekly sort of an appeal. At some point during warm weather I end up realizing that a few of my summer dresses have just died---and this year some of my summer dresses are still in my son's apartment in Ashkelon. I ended up making this dress...a simple sheath with a couple of godets. Godets are the sewing term for extra fabric added to a seam to create volume.  This is the dress. It feels like something that a mom would have worn during my childhood. The fabric is an activewear knit. Possibly one of my readers owns leggins or a bathing suit in this knit which is surprisingly cool. The stylus of my phone broke off inside my phone. I figured out how to remove it and installed a new stylus which I had purchased when I thoug...

 The nice thing about working away at something is that eventually---there is progress. Over the past many days I have been constructing stripes. As I work on building each stripe my goal is to have each stripe beautiful on it's own as well as working as part of the whole composition that will be the tallit. Sometimes when people ask about my work they ask me about the techniques that I usein creating a tallit. I always tell them that I am not married to technique. I can dye or embroider or piece or use any number of other methods.  Right now I love the two layers of block printing on these two stripes. The other day I began assembling the tallit. I construct the tallit on both the right and the wrong side--because the tallit is flipped back over thew shoulders. I start placing the stripes from the bottom of the tallit and work my way up. I stitched the bottom lines of metallit stitching by using a guide line on my sewing machine. All of the other elements are spaced a pressur...

 I know that often my posts are something of a crazy quilt of topics. I do try to keep the scope of topics a little bit focused so I don't sound completely deranged. However despite working on Judith's Tallit for the past many weeks I have often neglected to post about my progress.  I don't expect any of you to memorize each and every post  so a quick recap. Judith needs a replacement for a tallit that I had made for her a bunch of years ago. The old tallit was made out of silk noil. Noil takes dyes beautifully but isn't a particularly strong silk. I was charged with making Judith a new tallit out of stronger silk matka. Judith chose the silk for the tallit form the website of one of my favorite place to purchase silk matka. Unfortunately each of the silks arrived a slightly different green than depicted on screen. I couldn't use the silks as is and have been working on creating a pleasant conversation between the colors that really didn't want to be in the same...

 I don't know what other families do to celebrate Father's day, but this is what our family did. Any of you who are regular readers, know that our family gets great joy from supermarket tourism. Our kids began discussing what to do to celebrate their father. Initially they thought that we should go to a Lower East Side pickle festival, My husband loves pickles. I can't eat them and our youngest detests pickles and the smell of brine. Those of us who are not pickle inclined were ready to go along for the ride because we love the honoree. We had discovered that the festival would be less attractive a destination than anticipated. So we suggested instead a visit to  Netcost in Rego Park . The last time we had gone, in addition to the vast array of Eastern European foods they also sold kosher meat. We thought that the perfect Father's Day activity would be grocery shopping. We all met at the market. There are two different sour cream departments. One of them showed Israeli ...