sarah in nyc

When I was in elementary school it seemed like every other child in my class had a granny square vest made by their grandmother. Both boys and girls wore their granny square vests. Girls tended to wear theirs in bright colors and boys in manly browns and beiges. Some of those grandmothers seemed to be accomplished needlewomen, others crochet with more enthusiasm than skill. My grandmother died just before that fad hit. And even if she were not underground in New Jersey, the chances of her crocheting me such a vest were slim to none. Mama was not known for her needlework. I envied the kids with grandmothers or great-aunts who used to make them ugly vests, or sweaters or stocking caps. In the last few months, I have become a great-aunt twice. I have been enjoying the opportunity to make things for these two little girls in our family. Before I make something for a baby I think about what it is like to be the mother of a small baby. You are sleep deprived and don't really ha...

I have been working on making a Torah mantle for the past while. The mantle is being made in memory of someone named Baruch. Developing the design for this piece was a long, long process that took a few years. The text I am using comes from the daily prayers  Amazon.com Widgets והאר עינינו בתורתך ודבק לבנו במצותיך Enlighten our eyes with Your Torah, attach our hearts to your commandments My client   and I decided to use textiles that mattered to her and to Baruch to create the lettering. One of the textiles was a kippah worn by Baruch during the many months that he was bald from his chemo treatments.  Applique is basically collage on fabric. A few things complicate the task. One is that the base fabric for this Torah mantle is velvet. Velvet is beautiful. The wonderful nap has a tendency to shift when being sewn.  The other technical challenge is how to get the lettering onto the fabric. Early in my sewing career I attempted to attach a backi...

B’s son’s bar-mitzvah is on the 27th. I had agreed to complete the atara in time to mail her the atara in time for her to wear it at that great event. I backed the arara with white silk, which will never be seen, and topstitched in gold. I then sewed it onto the tallit. I used a lavender rayon thread because it worked with both the orangey/pink sky colors and the blue of the ocean. One thing that irritated me about the atara that came with the tallit is that the same color thread was used in both the bobbin and the needle. The white thread was jarring and a bit cheap looking on the blue. I hope that B is happy with the result. I certainly am.

I cheated a bit yesterday. The Challa cover with the appliqued leaves was not quite completed. It was still not backed and was missing it's border. As I looked at it during the evening, I realized that it needed some floral matter in addition to the appliqued foliage. Sometimes I purchase fabric because I have a specific project in mind for it. Sometimes I purchase fabric because it simply appeals to me. The crinkle purple iridescent poly I used for the flowers appealed to me on a purely irrational basis. I found it in a curtain store on 37th street. it was a magpie purchase. "Shiny! Crinkled! Iridescent! Must own!" At $5/yard two yards was not a bad deal. I tore off a three inch strip and serged the long ends together. Then I snipped off 3-5 inch lengths of the strip , sewed them into bagels and then gathered the serged edge.. Then I gathered the open end and sewed the flower like purple lumps onto the challa cover. Several of these flowers have a bead sewn into the ...

A big shawl tallit is seen on both the right and the wrong side of the fabric. This works just fine for a traditional woven tallit. The woven stripes can be seen both on the face and the reverse of the fabric. When you work with a tallit that is sewn , or pieced, rather than woven this does not naturally occur. I find tallitot with what I think of as naked undersides to be rather distressing. Maybe it is an OCD thing, but they really bother me in a visceral way. Those tallitot just seem WRONG. I admit that according to halacha /Jewish law there is nothing wrong with a tallit that is blank on the underside. But to me it feels like something that ought not be done. My neurosis on this matter has led to having to figure out how to construct tallitot that read as stripes on both sides, yet don't have nasty raw edges. Over the years I have come up with several solutions. I had once done a tallit where I hemmed each stripe before attaching it to the next stripe with a three step zi...

I know, I posted the pictorial panels yesterday. I had thought that they were done and just needed to be bordered in the luscious heavy black silk. I was wrong. This is also why work always takes me longer than I expect. I end up making unplanned for improvements along the way. The pieces take longer-- and it is so worth it. First of all, baby Moses needed simple facial features. The fastest way to add those was via Shiva Paint Stick and a stencil. The little round mouth stencil was courtesy of a hole punched with a standard hole puncher. The eyes, Exacto knifed out of the same piece of paper. Voila... Moses has a cute baby face. Then I noticed that I hadn't covered the outer edges of the panel in fabric . So I cut watery shapes out of shantung scraps. My clever buddies at the Creative Machine list taught me the brilliant trick of using a glue stick to hold down fabric for applique. No, you don't need to use a fancy made for fabric only glue stick available at a premium. R...