sarah in nyc

 I haven't been posting much lately. I was sick with a bad cold which lost me a week in the land of the living. So let me atone for myself by posting some pretty things. I was reorganizing some of my stash of vintage linens and pulled out a couple of pieces to share. I can't figure out the date for the pretty centerpiece below. The pale yellow is a little unusual. The combined pulled thread and wrapped embroidery  is awfully attractive. The piece is bordered with chain stitched botanical motifs. If any of you have a sense of where this piece lives historically or it's possible geographic origin I would love to hear from you. Continuing on the theme of geometric pulled thread work, I own three of these lovely linen batiste placemats. They will probably live on one of our glass fronted cabinets in the future. The lace trimmed hankie below needs a tiny bit of mending. This looks like Italian lace to me. Clearly this isn't a nose honking sort of a hankie but the sort one tu...

 In the last many weeks there has been a crop of babies born to people I love. I made sweaters for two of those babies. I decided to make matching tunics and big-bottomed leggings for some of the other babies. When I was a mother to babies I loved clothes that were comfortable for the baby to wear, were easy to wash, and were delightful for me to look at. I had found a  free pattern for baby leggings that had a ton of room for diapers. I liked that the cuffs allow the leggings to fit a baby for more than fifteen minutes. All of these outfits are made of fabrics that I have used to make dresses for me. I can vouch for the pajamalike comfort of each of the fabrics. These are the diaper friendly leggings. I made two pairs in this fabric. Here it is with a matching tunic.  This is the other tunic. Someone had given one of my kids a purple and turquoise infant-sized tie-dye t-shirt. We loved dressing our babies in it.   The off-cuts from a dress I had made this summe...

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...