sarah in nyc

One of the great things about sewing is that something that for the rest of the universe is a splurge, like a new dress can be a very small splurge. For the past while I have been careful about adding to my enormous fabric stash. Last week, knowing that my birthday was coming up I  bought some fabric just because as Marie Kondo says, "It sparked joy." Monday I sewed up the dress basing the shape on another dress I made in a similar weight fabric. Normally one cuts a dress on the fold.  What you see is the pattern for half the dress with the center line along the fold.  Cutting a garment that way is a big time saver. I wanted the design centered along the midline of my body.   So I cut the dress out with the fabric flat, unfolded. The dress feels great on. I wore it all day yesterday to celebrate my birthday.  The dress feels like a party. For less than the cost of breakfast at a diner I can enjoy this gift to myself for a long time to come. Erev my birthday Tant...

 There are a few small accomplishments that I have done in the last couple of days. I had purchased this fabric a couple of weeks ago. it was incredibly inexpensive. It appealed to me because it looks like patchwork made on a serger--I know a completely sewing geekly sort of an appeal. At some point during warm weather I end up realizing that a few of my summer dresses have just died---and this year some of my summer dresses are still in my son's apartment in Ashkelon. I ended up making this dress...a simple sheath with a couple of godets. Godets are the sewing term for extra fabric added to a seam to create volume.  This is the dress. It feels like something that a mom would have worn during my childhood. The fabric is an activewear knit. Possibly one of my readers owns leggins or a bathing suit in this knit which is surprisingly cool. The stylus of my phone broke off inside my phone. I figured out how to remove it and installed a new stylus which I had purchased when I thoug...

 That's right folks, three topics in one post. One of my readers often asks me why I don't make haute couture clothing, meaning garments made with lots of complicated and invisible  on the outside, inner structure. The simple answer is that I don't wear those sort of garments---by choice. What I do love to make and wear are garments that are as comfortable as pajamas and can be worn for a range of occasions.  Before we left on our west coast trip I made a trio of new dresses and also brought along another three or four dresses.  We were away for twenty one days. We had a range of different activities we participated in from attending synagogue, going to a few fancy dinners, just roaming around. We experienced several different kinds of weather from close to freezing to warm enough to go out without even a light sweater. All of the dresses I made were worn multiple times, with the exception of the sequin dress I made to wear to the wedding---that one I only wore once....

 Many years ago my wise friend Sharon told me that every time she closed a real-estate deal she would buy herself a piece of jewelry. I loved the idea of rewarding yourself after completing a piece of hard work.  I had been working and kind of a crazy pace since before Passover. It was time to reward myself. Many of us who grew up in tune with the Jewish calendar know that it is traditional to have a new garment for the Jewish New Year.  I wanted to make myself a new dress. I have lots of lovely yardage comfortably ageing in my closet. I had purchased a length of black and white vertically striped lace a while back from  Fabric Mart . (What do you get for clicking on the link? great deals on fabric. What do I get? No kickbacks, just the happy knowledge that you too can get excellent fabric for a great price) I had an idea for a dress, lay the fabric out on my floor and cut. Attempt #1 was a failure. Attempt #2 was not. It's a simple dress made out of complicated...

 Summer dresses tend to have shorter lifetimes than cooler weather dresses. Sweat and frequent laundering tend to be hard on fabric. Earlier this morning I was steaming the creases out of a batch of dresses and,  it seemed to me like a good subject for a post. The fabric for this dress is Marimekko. The fabric had had a previous life as a tablecloth used by the fabulous and chic Sharri who passed away just as Covid hit New York. Sharri's chic and fabulous daughter gave me bags and bags of wonderful textiles that had belonged to her mother. I cut this dress along the lines of the dress I had knocked off of a Norma Kamali dress. I wore this dress to my nephew's wedding and have made a couple of variations since.  One of the things that I love about the black and white dress is that although I didn't match the pattern at the center seamlines, they are perfectly matched at the side seams.  Another thing that I love about the dress is that it reminds me of both Sharri and...

The internet is filled with sewing competitions. Some are sponsored by sewing discussion groups, others are sponsored by textile trade groups and others by fabric retailers. I have until now not entered sewing competitions. Most of them are focused on the kinds of sewing I just don't do. I am not going to enter a competition where everyone is sewing the same garment pattern- that just isn't my thing. I am not going to bother making a tailored jacket. I am also not going to spend time sewing something that I have zero interest in making quilted postcards. However, my favorite online fabric retailer  Fabric Mart  recently ran a contest that was exactly right up my alley. The contest was to turn this fabric panel into a garment. let me explain what exactly you are looking it. This is a length of white knit fabric printed with three nearly complete dress fronts and three sleeves. you should be aware that the dress front aside from being incomplete, are not symmetrical. They are al...

I am aware that despite the name of this blog, I haven't been writing about sewing all that often in the past while. This post, at least goes back to the subject. Summer dresses tend to have a shorter life span than dresses worn during the cooler months. Hot weather fabrics tend to be a bit less sturdy. sweat is also corrosive to fabrics. The result is that summer dresses live a hard and fast life. The weather had been almost freakishly cold this spring so I could keep wearing cool weather dresses. over the past few days as I went to my closet to choose something to wear, my options seemed more and more limited.  I had made this dress several weeks ago, from a stretch suiting. I had purchased this fabric for my youngest who loves black and white checkerboard. It was too much of a variation on checkerboard to make him happy and not the real thing. This dress was fast to make up and I like wearing it. It is, however, better suited for those cold New England springs when you want to w...

Last Friday we drove to the wedding.  We spent Shabbat with dear, dear friends. My older sister hosted a Friday night dinner for some of us out-of- towners. We attended the auf-ruf on Shabbat morning and had the pleasure of hearing my nephew read Torah and the Haftarah. As we walked back and forth through Newton each street name was full of memories. I never lived in Newton but many of my classmates did. Grant Street, Hobart Road, Langley Road, Cotton Street, Park Lane Street, Ballard Street, each street name evoked a person, a relationship, parties invited to, parties not invited to..... Sunday morning friends and family gathered for the wedding. Friends, readers of this blog as well as my sewing buddies have asked me to show photos of me in my dress.  My cousin Eunice who often serves as the family documentarian took these photos of me at the beginning of the festivities. We (that means my husband at the wheel) drove home after the wedding and than...