sarah in nyc

 I haven't been posting because I have been sick.   Here I am staying warm. I am still not sure if this is food poisoning or some sort of s stomach bug. The only remotely good thing about this is that I have lost some weight. It would have been nicer to achieve the same result by going to a luxurious spa. Last night I stupidly chose to eat an exciting supper---some chicken soup with big chunks of vegetables. It's back to plain rice and white potatoes for me...what could I have been thinking? Anyway, I couldn't have Miles and his family come by on Sunday as planned to tie the tzitzit so i tied them on my own. I also made Miles a tallit bag.  I used this heavy upholstery weight striped denim in my stash. It wears like iron. I had made myself a skirt out of some of it a few years ago and know that this will wear like iron. Ihe decorative panel is made out more the woven ribbon panel that I had made for the pinot/ corner pieces. I edged it in more of the gold and blue st...

 Many of my sewing buddies earn their living altering special occasion dresses. It is often difficult work. Special occasion dresses are often made with a much more complicated construction than everyday wear. A skirt might be made up of many, many layers so a job that might seem simple, like shortening a dress by a few inches might be a massive task. I am not even going into the complications of altering a bodice of a special occasion gown. Trust me it is much harder than hemming such a dress. My husband and I have been invited to the wedding of a young cousin.The dress code for the wedding is formal. I figured no problem, I have a whole wardrobe of long dresses. The bride however indicated that she didn't want her guests wearing black. She wanted a garden party feel. This was a problem. I have a Moschino wrap dress vaguely similar to this dress but a solid dark blue. It wasn't really a long dress. I am on the cusp of being an old enough relative to wear whatever I wanted.  A...

Ella goes to my shul. She is a terrific sensible and funny kid.  I made her tallit for her bat-mitzvah, and when she was younger I repaired her beloved stuffed bunny. Amazon.com Widgets Ella is graduating from high school in a few weeks. She is going to two proms and is attending a family wedding. Ella fell in love with a dress on Etsy. The seller asked that the buyers send their measurements in because the dress would be made to measure. Ella asked me to help her take her measurements. I did.  The dress Ella wanted came in a rose print on ivory chiffon. It was no longer available. Ella chose a celadon green instead.  A few weeks later, the dress arrived. Ella's mom got in touch with me. She asked me if I  could make the dress work. The color wasn't celadon, but more of a dreary grey. I have seen exactly that color of grey on the faces of people with terminal cancer. The color was depressing and the fit was really off. The neckline stood far away fr...

We often refer to my youngest as “ The Buttless Wonder”.  Back in the day when he had to wear a uniform for school he was too skinny for Old Navy slim pants and had to wear suspenders. I ended up having to make his school pants because it was just too hard to find pants that were slim enough to fit him. Ten years later, my youngest is a whole lot taller but still really skinny. Recently he has fallen in love with wearing really skinny flashy pants.   My son has a skinny friend who gave him a pair of Beetlejuice black and white striped jeans that she had grown tired of. My son’s skinny friend is , as she ought to be , built like a girl, and is not a buttless wonder. The pants were baggy in the butt and were falling down. I offered to alter the pats. This is a skill that is far out of my usual wheelhouse.   I removed the waistband at the side seams and at the back seam and took the pants in at each of those three points.   I then had to make the waistba...

I know that when most people teach sewing, they have a curriculum and the student learns what the teacher decides to teach.  I have let my student set her agenda when it comes to her sewing lessons. I assume that if she wants to learn a skill then she will be eager to learn it, even if on paper it might seem too advanced for her. Sometimes, my student wants to try things that I have not yet attempted to do. Today, my student came in with a pair of shorts similar to this pair. They were a pair of shorts that she had purchased. She owns several pairs of pants made by the maker, so she bought them with out trying them on. There shorts, were however, more than three inches too big. I have never altered pants for myself. My youngest, is skinny, and I  add elastic to the back waistband of his pants as a matter of course. We briefly discussed this option which might work for a boy who does not care a whole lot about fashion, but for a girl who cares deeply about fa...