sarah in nyc

 A big job is terrifying, so terrifying that it can make it impossible to move forward. The big job can be less intimidating is you nibble away at the tasks  one at a time. I cut, then pieced and backed strips of the Hanae Mori dress for Ezra and Shay's wedding tallit. The center stripe above is lined in white silk.  The other two are lined in blue. These strips are edged in serged stitching that will soon be covered with embroidered ribbon. To the right you see the atara, painted, backed and edged. Atop the atara are the pinot cut backed and serged. Below are the (unpressed and complete with loose threads) pinot with one pass of machine stitching. Now with two passes of machine embroidery. There will be a third row --to attach the corner pieces to the tallit. And now, the stripes... Here, the narrower stripe is edged with ribbon and the wider stripe is awaiting ribbon. Below, ribbon stacked and stitched and soon be to sewn to the stripe. Yet another ribbon and embroidery...

 There are times when a task seems really simple in theory, but the reality is that it is actually difficult. I have been faced with such a task working on Ezra and Shay's wedding tallit.  The tallit is 42 inches wide. The bottom width of each skirt panel is  48 inches wide. That sounds like it should be easy. If this were paper I could just cut strips across the bottom of the skirt to make the tallit stripes. But this isn't paper  I am making these stripes out of fabric which has a grain. If you cut the stripes off grain the fabric will shift, distort and ripple when I sew it to the tallit. And no, that isn't the desired look.  I am including this diagram about how to create a skirt with a fuller hemline  so you can understand my problem a bit better. When you start out with a pencil skirt pattern, usually the yarns that make up a pencil skirt go north-south and east-west. A flared skirt has yarns that are  like that in the center but get increasingl...

I began writing a post yesterday but the murder of the two Israeli embassy workers in Washington just left me to upset to write. Before any of you say that perhaps it is understandable that they got shot exactly because they worked for the Israeli embassy, I would like to remind you that they weren't wearing big signs that stated where they were employed. Theywere at an event at a Jewish institution and the point of the event was to promote co-existance. We are living in sad and anxious times. So as you read the rest of this post I just want you to know where my head really is. To mis-quote the poet Judah HaLevi, "My heart is in Washington but my body is in New York." A little over a week ago I was contacted by a young couple. The groom's mom is no longer living. The bride and the groom wanted to include his mother in the wedding in some way. This is the dress that the groom's mom wore to her 1986 wedding. It is a Hanae Mori tea length dress. The dress is made out...

 Our friends Alfie and Judy moved to New York from Minnesota a couple of years ago. Since they moved here we have gone on a few adventures together. Last fall they drove us up the Hudson River to Cold Spring. Sunday, we made the trip to the least New York part of the city, Govenor's Island. You take the ferry from the southern tip of Manhattan. When you arrive, you feel miles away from the hustle and bustle instead of being just a ten minute boat ride away. The island has served as a military base since the early 1800s. There is a wonderful fort  to wander through. Govenor's Island served as a Coast Guard base for a couple of decades. During those years it functioned like a town with an elementary school and houses of worship. After a few decades of indecision the island now serves as an arts center during the summer months. Artists can apply for studio spaces in one of the beautiful wooden houses. Each of the houses was assigned to a group and visitors could wander though the...