sarah in nyc

Like everyone else, I have been spending a fair amount of time in Zoom meetings. I have been spending some of that time doing handwork. I assume that the hum of a sewing machine during a Zoom meeting would drive all of the other participants' batty. Sewing on a machine also necessitated blocking your face which would also be pretty rude during a Zoom session. I have been working away on embroidering the lettering for Max's atara.   Satin stitching is not something that I have done often and takes actual concentration. Although I am happily halfway done with the embroidery, this is a task that sometimes takes more focus than I can spare during a meeting where I really have to pay attention. There is always more than one task on my plate at a time.  I had made a really simple dress in February.  The fit was weird so I put it away for a few weeks. When I pulled it out and tried it on again I discovered that all of the wonky fit disappeared, as if by magic, if I wore the...

Creating a piece for a client is always about balancing  various sets of needs. Often my client is a twelve year old kid with their own strong opinions. Sometimes the parents have strong opinions. Clearly,  (and anyone who knows me for more than five minutes can tell you) I am a person with opinions on things, particularly Jewish ritual objects. This has been especially true in the making of Alice's tallit. A big part of my job has been taking what she has felt strongly about and making it work in the context of a tallit. Alice loves orange and red. neither would be my first, or even tenth choice on a tallit. Never the less, it is important that she be heard. There are lots of tallit makers that combine lovely ready made ribbon to make a tallit. I use a mix of embroidery stitches and utility stitches ( the sorts of stitches you might use to mend torn trousers or to install elastic into a pair of underpants) to embellish the ribbon and the stripes into a composition...

As I get ready to write this post, I look over the photos I have taken over the past few days. There are times when they seem to organize themselves into a tidy little story. There are other times when  they are the visual equivalents of the  school lunches my mother sometimes made when she was really short on sleep and grocery shopping still needed to get done. My sisters and I would compare the results with a befuddled shrug. I once got a cottage cheese and cranberry sauce sandwich. My mother when asked, said that she knew I liked them both. My sister got a cottage cheese and sauerkraut sandwich for the same reason. Both were  difficult to eat in sandwich form. I think I may have gotten the better of the two sandwiches. So bear with me as you read the rest of this post. I am a bit sleep deprived. We got up early yesterday to observe Aunt Yetta's Yahrzeit.  We both adored my mother-in-law's younger sister. My husband used to say that Yetta in her outlook was ...

Perhaps because I read so many cookbooks and sewing books from the early 20th century which are text only I had assumed that my text-only description of how to transform a man's shirt into a woman's peasant style blouse would suffice. I realize now that we live in a different world than our grandparents. Photos or illustrations really do make explaining some tasks a bit easier. My son had inherited this shirt from our neighbor. He has been wearing it for a few years. It has a bit of a bleach stain on the back yoke near the collar. Since my son has so many really beautiful dress shirts, I told him that I was claiming this shirt for transformation. I marked where the shirt needed to be cut, for you my dear readers. Left to my own devices I would have just cut with no guidelines.   Both the front and the back of the shirt need to be cut. You can see the bleach spot near the collar. There are some pleats in the shirt back so when you cut the collar and the yo...

Probably fifteen years ago someone on an early proto-blog posted directions for turning a man's dress shirt into a woman's peasant shirt.  I kept the link because I thought that the idea was brilliant and because I wanted to be able to give the author of that blog credit. Soon after I began following the directions on that blog the blog disappeared so I am unable to properly give credit to the source of this idea. Fifteen years ago, my daughter loved wearing peasant blouses. I made a few for her out of beautiful shirts from the local thrift store. She liked her blouses with a gathered low neck, a gathered waist, and a puffed sleeve. I had purchased a couple of extra shirts that were awaiting transformation but my daughter has moved on in her desire for peasant blouses. I needed an over shirt to work out in and claimed one of the shirts. The shirt is made out of delicious cotton. I no longer which high-end shirt maker made the shirt. This is another shirt that I ...