sarah in nyc

Between Passover and managing to get through Covid-19 I haven't focused my writing in this blog on sewing, either for work, or for pleasure, in a really long time. That doesn't mean that work hasn't been going on, although to be honest,  I have been less productive lately. Nevertheless, despite working with three other adults in the house three of whom like to work in the same space (my usual work space) it hasn't been all that easy. Max's bar-mitzvah had been rescheduled from May to November. It was time to pull out his tallit and see what still needed to be done. I wasn't thrilled with the letters I had embroidered for his pino t/corner pieces.   They are a bit chunky and clunky looking.They really do need a border to help clean them up.  The line of gold stitching helps. Unfortunately, I was having trouble focusing on the job. I was as distracted and fidgety doing the line of gold embroidery as an ants-in-the pants elementary school kid. When I am working tha...

Perhaps because I read so many cookbooks and sewing books from the early 20th century which are text only I had assumed that my text-only description of how to transform a man's shirt into a woman's peasant style blouse would suffice. I realize now that we live in a different world than our grandparents. Photos or illustrations really do make explaining some tasks a bit easier. My son had inherited this shirt from our neighbor. He has been wearing it for a few years. It has a bit of a bleach stain on the back yoke near the collar. Since my son has so many really beautiful dress shirts, I told him that I was claiming this shirt for transformation. I marked where the shirt needed to be cut, for you my dear readers. Left to my own devices I would have just cut with no guidelines.   Both the front and the back of the shirt need to be cut. You can see the bleach spot near the collar. There are some pleats in the shirt back so when you cut the collar and the yo...

This is a post that will have appeal to the sewing geeks among you. If you don't care about garment construction, don't bother reading the rest of this post.   Yesterday one of my sewing buddies wanted to know how I figured out where to place the darts in  my daughter's birthday dress. I had learned  a cool method from  this book Amazon.com Widgets Which you can download from Amazon for not very much money, or buy on Google play for even less money. I am using paper for this tutorial because I am not making a dress today. This is your basic A line dress shape. It already has a crease down the center because you have probably cut your dress out on a fold. You will need that crease later. Fold the dress where you want the starting point of your waist dart. Press that fold well.  Do the same for the ending point of that dart. Then fold the dress on that center line. Waist darts are often put in line with the top shoulde...

My mornings begin these days with morning minyan. I usually take my camera with me because I like to capture a bit of something that appeals to my eye. In retrospect I realize that what I have chosen to photograph makes my neighborhood look far lusher and more beautiful than it might to most people walking down Broadway. I was in love with the quality of the light. I love the thin translucent  leaves of spring. The health food store leases it’s sidewalk space to the flower vendor. By yesterday, we had come to the end of the challot I had baked for Shavuot. I made bagels. A couple of years ago a cousin had eaten some of my bread and asked it if baking it required complicated equipment. This is all you need beyond a cup, spoon, bowl, and baking sheet for making bagels. You use the spatula to lift the boiled bagels from the boiling water ( with added brown sugar). The baked bagels need to be tested by my sons to see if they taste good. This b...

Last winter I had purchased both the plain and embroidered versions of this soft semi sheer sweater knit from Fabric Mart . The plain version of this fabric is a dress.   I decided to make a cardigan out of the embroidered yardage. You start out by folding the fabric into 1/4’s. The stretch goes east west. Because I’m a little lazy, I cut the sleeves with the body of the sweater. If I were even more lazy I would have not angled the sleeve as I do here, eliminating one additional seam. Feel free to be lazy.   I cut open the front of the cardigan   Then I fixed my cutting error and added wearing ease via gussets inserted in each under arm. I then sewed up all of the seams.   Then I put on the sweater and wore it until bed-time.   I serged around most of the raw edges. I still have not edged the cuffs.   I may leave the edges fairly simple or at some other point add a fancier edge finish. That’s it. A still r...