sarah in nyc

 I suppose that if I had a stand alone studio for my work that I would show up and work away at just my client work and go home when I was done for the day. Instead, like the work in the pre-industrial world the labors, the one I am paid for and the ones I do to take care of my household just kind of flow into one another.  This morning I knew that I had to set the color on a scarf I had been commissioned to make. Setting the color means lots of long hot steamy ironing with paper between the iron and the painted silk. The color setting works better with a nice padding beneath the work. I also have a healthy stack of ironing that needed to be done. So I began the work of  setting the color by ironing a red plaid cotton tablecloth that had been my mother's. After the tablecloth was reasonably smooth and folded into 1/8ths I started pressing this pretty piece that you see here from the reverse so you can admire the nice stitching. I'm not sure of the original use. perhaps it...

 When I was in college, my friend Alan used to tell us how his family fortune was based on a patent held by his grandparents. The patent was for a material that could be used to create machine made lace. This material could be stitched to recreate traditional lace patterns and then when the stitching was complete, the material could be washed away leaving the lace like fabric. My friend Alan used to say that this is what created the lace table cloth industry. Now, it is possible for home sewers to purchase the same sort of stuff. It has been on the market for a long time. It is sold as wash away stabilizer. When you pull the roll out of the package the stabilizer feels like a rubbery plastic.when it gets wet it feels like gelatin. Over the years I have read several articles about using the fabric to create not just traditional looking lace, lots of people use machine embroidery motifs to do just that but wilder more organic looking lace similar to the work of the designers tha...