sarah in nyc

Many sewing/craft blogs out there seem to be run on the review economy. That is, manufacturers send free stuff to the blog owner who gives a positive review about the free stuff and then the blog owner is then sent more free stuff to review...  Amazon.com Widgets When I write about a fabric store or a book in glowing terms, it's because it is something that I love, not something that I have been paid to love. Several weeks ago I received an email from a Dutch sewing pattern magazine company asking me to review their magazine on my blog.  Made By oranges produces two magazines, which features patterns for women and  which features clothing for kids, from preschool to pre-teen. European pattern magazines, unlike American pattern magazines typically feature a pull out section with all of the patterns for all of the garments in the magazine.You get a whole lot of bang for your buck.  There are a fair number of pattern magazines based in Europ...

This book  is one of the most brilliant and thought provoking books on pattern drafting and garment design that I have ever read. It's dense. It's a doctoral dissertation and it has gotten me completely obsessed.  If you download the sample of the book on Googlebooks you get the whole book.  Rickard Lindqvist has figured out how to cut complicated garments out of one piece of fabric. Some of the basic tunic -type garments I totally understand, and will probably replicate but when he shows a diagram of what at first glance looks like a conventional men's suit jackets that is made using this method, my brain starts to explode. The jacket is beautiful...and looks like a normal men's suit jacket...except there are no shoulder seams.  The garments are made to work with the movements of the body.  If you aren't into sewing or garment construction just forget you read this. If you are into garment construction prepare to have your head explode and have y...

Amazon.com Widgets I just bought this book on Amazon. It looked like it was the book I was always looking for or perhaps the book I had wished I had written. I was really looking forward to receiving it and looking forward to making clothing from it. This illustration completely sold me on the book. I loved the simple shapes that make visually complex clothing. I also loved how the same shape was shown in variations that show how just a bit of tweaking can create very different looks. The book arrived last week. it's really beautiful. I already made myself a nightgown based on the goddess dress.  It was quick to make and looks pretty wonderful. I do have a couple of issues with the book. One is I know that I can be a bit idiosyncratic in my use of language. Despite this quirk, I do know that I can my my own quirky use of language and terms understandable to others. I found many of the terms used by the author to be incomprehensible. Do you know wh...

My mother’s stroke could have been far worse. It seems to have hit in an interesting language processing piece of her brain. As of tonight, she is in rehab. I hope that the speech therapists will do good work with my mother.  Clearly, this is the sanitized version of the week with most of the excitement and drama left out.  If you want to know more details you can email me and I will fill you in.   I’m glad to be home with my husband and kids. Waiting for me as I walked in the door was Shabbat dinner cooked by my older son. He had baked the challah earlier in the week. My oldest came for dinner as well. It was a wonderful welcome home.   I had ordered two sewing books before I left and they were both here when I came home. This was one of the books. It’s quite a good book with well drawn diagrams for making the garments. The book was written in 1971, on the early side  for this sort of a book. Most of the  hippie clothing books were writ...

I tend to get sick the same way over and over.  My throat hurts and I feel generally icky. Yes, I’m drinking lots of fluids and I have upped my intake of vitamin C. I’m taking horrible herbs, I’m not worse.. so I guess that’s good.   Being sick is no excuse not to work. So I have been embroidering the letters for Danielle's chuppah. As you can see, I’m about half way done with the second verse.   If Danielle is reading this, she should not be worried about the un-pressed  piece and all of the stray threads. This will look all tidy and beautiful when it is delivered. I also have been  playing with a new book. The clothing shown in this book is now being seen again on the street in many variations.  I have shown some of the illustrations. The author wrote the book assuming that most people would follow the illustrations rather than the written directions. This dress is clearly a version of a walk-away dress.   Anyway, a worth it to pu...

Walking around Manhattan I have been seeing lots of the simple sorts of summer dresses that I (and the rest of the world) wore in the 1970’s. The 1970’s was a great decade for DIY. Aside from the The Whole Earth Catalog , and Simple Living   which were generalist books that taught skills from simple plumbing to how to build a mulch pile along with  diagrams and patterns for simple clothing, there were also more specialized books with lots of directions for garment making. Some of the books came from  mainstream sources, like Time Life Sewing .  ( This is actually an excellent series both from a fashion history perspective as well as being really good at teaching skills. The material books are organized in a slightly daffy way though. It isn’t always easy to find exactly what you are looking for. It’s usually easy to find single volumes   on ebay or Amazon. Sometimes you can find the complete set or most of a complete set for not too much money) I h...

Our friends Kir and Beth just had a baby boy. The Brit is on Thursday.  I  knew that at least one of my old sewing books would have directions for making baby stuff. I am a big fan of Frances Blondin.She edited my new obsession, the Smart Sewing magazines put out during the late 1940’s and into the 1950’s. She produces wonderful easy to follow diagrams for making clothing. This diagram came out of her  The New Encyclopedia of Modern sewing  from 1946. You can buy this book on Amazon for a couple of bucks. It is worth every penny ( and more). Blondin's grid is in inch per square and is really easy to follow. I made the jacket out of two smooth cotton shirtings. Both were renants from other fabrics. the red and white from a dress that failed. The blue and white from a summer skirt I had made a few seasons back. I think both fabrics were from mystery bundles from www.fabricmartfabrics.com . I think I may have selected that blue fabric. I tend to love fabri...

Two batches of vegetable filled latkes were fried and eaten. I think I have had my fill until next year. Our display of Chanukiyot looks a bit de-populated with out my daughter's and older son's.  They are both lighting theirs far away. My daughter called last night, delighted with her sweater, and promises to send me photos of her wearing it. My friend Marky did a beautiful job with the Chanukah bags and with her permission, I will post the photos soon. Yesterday, I did my usual post - Shabbat Services visit to the library. I have been noticing a much larger selection of crafts books. One of my sewing list friends said that libraries keep track of books checked out frequently, and use those lists when they do their purchasing. I took out two sewing books, not so much because I was interested in them, but because I wanted to be sure that more books get purchased by the system. I ended up being delighted by The Encyclopedia of Sewing Machine Technique by Nancy Bednar a...

Design It, Sew It, and Wear It: Clothes from Patterns You Make Yourself    Yesterday one of my kids picked up a book I had reserved at the library, it was Duane Bradley's Design It, Sew It, and Wear It: . I see, from looking at Amazon that a new edition was put out in 1993, but I got the 1979 edition. This is the cover from the 1993 edition. All in all, not a bad book for getting started making clothing sans pattern. On the minus side, the clothing is not fabulous, but rather utilitarian. Actually, that may not be a minus at all.  Not everyone wants to dress like a Wiccan.The book progresses from easy garments made only from rectangles to more complex garments with darts. the directions are good and easy to understand. I'm realizing that I sound a bit lukewarm  here, but I realize that it is mostly, because I wish I had Part 2 of this book, with garments a bit more complicated. With a bit of fishing at Amazon, you can get this book for very little, especial...