sarah in nyc

 As the first night of Seder grows near I am slowly making lists and ticking things off of those lists. The second round of glass bowls are being kashered on a window sill so we can use them during Passover. The silver will have to wait until after Shabbat. I cobbled together a good enough dinner for tonight. The dress for my great niece is completed. Tim  and his wife arrived to tie his tzitzit. Both Tim and Paula were really good at the task of wrapping and tying the tzitzit. Interestingly they both had such different hands .Each did beautiful work but they each looked different from one another. We visited a friend yesterday afternoon. I loved seeing the birds perfectly reflected in her back yard window. A few bits of pretty architecture near our friend's house. Hopefully I can gets lots of sleep on Shabbat so I can tackle the rest of my list. Two sweet springtime songs for you. Shabbat Shalom!

People will often ask me how long it takes me to make a garment. Four or five years ago I was shopping at Metro Textile. As always, I bought some yardage off of some of the hundreds of bolts arrayed in the store.  As always, I also poked around in the remnant bin by the door while Kashi, Metro's owner, tallied up my purchase. I love the sense of possibility in a remnant bin. I see and touch and select fabrics that I otherwise never would think of purchasing. One of the remnants was this, less than a yard of light green with threads of not exactly the same shade of green woven through the weft. I was completely smitten by the fabric and knew that it was meant to be a simple pencil skirt. The cost of this length of fabric was negligible. Kashi might have even thrown it in for free if I had made a large enough purchase of other stuff. That fabric sat in my stash for four or five years. My sewing pals call that marinating.  Every few months I would pull tha...

This is a post that will have appeal to the sewing geeks among you. If you don't care about garment construction, don't bother reading the rest of this post.   Yesterday one of my sewing buddies wanted to know how I figured out where to place the darts in  my daughter's birthday dress. I had learned  a cool method from  this book Amazon.com Widgets Which you can download from Amazon for not very much money, or buy on Google play for even less money. I am using paper for this tutorial because I am not making a dress today. This is your basic A line dress shape. It already has a crease down the center because you have probably cut your dress out on a fold. You will need that crease later. Fold the dress where you want the starting point of your waist dart. Press that fold well.  Do the same for the ending point of that dart. Then fold the dress on that center line. Waist darts are often put in line with the top shoulde...

Navah is one of the few people here in New York who knows me from childhood. She and her husband were several years younger than my parents. They were the cool grownups in my childhood memories.  I am wearing the blindingly white tights, Navah is wearing a cool peasant inspired maxi dress  Amazon.com Widgets Navah has been needle pointing tallit bags for her husband, her son and her grandchildren. I would guess that the first of the bags was in the planning stages when the above photo was taken.( This was the great hey-day of needlepoint. My own adventures in needlepoint began right around this time.  For the last several years I have been providing the lettering for Navah's tallit bags. This time after completing her bag Navah asked me to also construct the bag. While I had done lots of needlepoint from the ages of 11 to 18 or so, finishing off needlepoint was not something I had done before. I found several sites that explained how to finish the pi...

My cousin is getting married in a week and a half. It’s a black tie event. The bride comes from the land of sparkle, Long Island.   Several months ago my youngest was looking over my shoulder as I was internet fabric shopping. This sequin encrusted fabric was on sale. I was on the fence about buying it.   My son strongly encouraged me to buy it. I have had this fabric sitting in a bag on the shelf for months but I haven’t done a thing about making the dress. I had been mentally designing this dress, thinking about and discarding a variety of options. Because this fabric is sheet I decided to layer it over a tan scuba knit. I know it’s a boring color but it’s meant to be that way. The fabric has so much going on.   After a whole bunch of dithering, I decided on the dress design.   It’s a really simple off the shoulder column dress. I have often mistakenly cut the necks of my dresses too wide and have inadvertently ended up with an off the...

I had always assumed that drafting a set in sleeve was way too difficult for me. That's the reason that most of the garments I have made are sleeveless.  A while back, I decided to see if I could figure out how to draft a sleeve without a pattern. The following is what I have figured out. This method will work for a knit fabric. I have also used this method on not very fitted sleeves made out of a woven fabric.  I am assuming that you have already made a basic tank bodice and have sewn the shoulder seams together. I made lace sleeves, so you can see the contrast between the bodice and the sleeves.

Well, last Saturday night I wore my gold lame’ dress. This was a more at home sort of an evening. My youngest, as I have said before, is a skinny guy.   He had out grown many of his boxers. Some of them I had made for him when he was eight. Given that he is nearly 15, it seems reasonable that he needs to have his supply replenished. I used an older pair as a pattern. For the sake of speed, I made these with no side seams, laying the pattern out on the fold of the fabric. I then re cut the front to allow more room for my son’s “parts”. Most of the fabric arrived in Fabric Mart mystery bundles. The orangey floral is a rayon knit and feels soft to the touch. The blue stripe is a cotton poly knit with a little more poly than I would prefer. I finished one more pair out of that fabric after I took the photos. Last night, I couldn’t remember where I had purchased the yellow flannel print. I did remember that it was made out of Nick and Nora pajama fabric. Nick and Nora produce...

My synagogue is holding a fundraising event this Saturday night.  Yes, I do have other clothing that I could have worn.  I do however make my self clothing as a reward for getting work done. Working on a garment will often help me get the cobwebs in my head that are keeping me from properly completing my work. My friend Sharry sews. Like me, Sharry lives in an apartment and has limited storage space.  Several weeks ago, a friend of Sharry’s died. Her friend was a reporter, a world traveler and loved fabric. Sharry inherited lots of wonderful fabric. Being a generous woman, she also shared some with me. one of the fabrics was this vintage gold lame’. I thought it was a hoot.  I grew up in the land of preppie where gold lame’ was somewhat suspect, as something worn by women of loose repute. In the late 1960’s a proper lady might wear a gold lame’ shift, to say,, her synagogue benefit. One would need to wear a bouffant hair do with the dress. I thought that it mig...

These instructions are for a knit skirt. I fell in love with this ruffled grey knit. I had seen similar fabrics in ugly colors. I have also seen this fabric in really ugly print made up into shirts. I bought a yard of the fabric. I have enough left to make a top. Cut fabric to desired length. This fabric has the added benefit of having a line knit into it. That makes it really easy to cut a straight line. The fact that the ruffle will cover the raw edge means that I don't have to hem this skirt.  I measured the fabric around my hips being sure to include a bit extra for ease. I held that spot on the fabric with my fingers, folded the fabric until that point, alligned it and then cut along the raw edge. I folded my skirt width in 1/4, with both raw edges and the skirt center on the left. Here I show a thick strand of yarn where I will cut a hip curve. You can figure out the difference between waist and hip both in width as well as the distance between waist and maximum...

Earlier this spring, when I was in the fabric district one of the stores on 8th Avenue, (perhaps it was Ebad)  they had a giant cardboard box filled with odds and ends that they were selling for silly prices. One of the treasures in the box spoke to me. It was a length of  a border printed  Pucci-esque jersey. It was in the bin because there was a slight printing error in the fabric. I think that the  piece  ( about a yard and change) cost me about a subway fare, perhaps it was a bit more. I'm in the middle of solving problems on an invitation that I'm designing . I am also figuring out my next trip to Boston to ease my mother's transition from a medical facility to home. So, of course it seemed the perfect moment to expend some nervous energy making a dress out of the fabric. The fabric has borders along both selvages and I was nervous about getting enough fabric for the body of the dress out of  a not quite full width, of not all that m...