sarah in nyc

There are times when in theory a task seems simple, but when you get into the weeds of it it is crazy making. I am making a  Kittel for a client. My client is a woman who hates how the standard kittel makes her look like a tuber wearing a belt. Because she will be leading services in the kittel she wants the finished garment to be flattering but not sexy. I suggested a princess lined dress or lightweight coat. After going through hundreds of possible patterns online I thought that this dress would work best with some alterations. ( The dress would need to be lengthened by quite a bit, I would add a more dramatic cuff and of course a belt). I ordered the magazine and got my code to download the PDF pattern. The pattern itself is divided up between 21 sheets of paper and several more pages of instruction.  Each page needs two slivers trimmed off of the edges so that you can properly align the sheets and piece them into the full sized pattern. E...

During the golden age of Yiddish theater one of the posters advertising the production of a Shakespeare play in Yiddish proclaimed that this production of Hamlet or Macbeth was Amazon.com Widgets Fartayched und fabessered   that is translated and improved. That term  Fartayched und fabessered is often used as the Yiddish equivalent more or less of gilding the lily. All of this is a round about way of saying that the kittle I had made last year has now been tailored to fit the intended wearer. My boys' special ed teachers used to describe the things they were terrible at as "developing skills". My men's wear tailoring is a foreign language to me. I took in the side seams of the kittle and added two long waist darts at the sides.  One of my sewing buddies on one of my sewing discussion groups is a custom shirt maker. She has often spoken about darting men's shirts. I placed the darts fairly close to the side seams so they wouldn't show from t...

Over the last few days I have been working on altering the kittle. So far I have taken in the side seams. This had ended up being a much trickier job than I had anticipated. I don't know it it is my new and not fabulous sewing machine but the layers of fabric kept shifting and bunching on the underside of the fabric. To calm myself, I began listening to recordings of High Holiday music.  The work began to go much more smoothly. As I worked and sang along  with the recordings i recalled the email that the owner of the kittle had sent me hoping that every stitch be a prayer.  I am a little too much a Litvak to really think of every stitch as actually being a prayer, yet I know from long experience that listening to liturgical music as I work helps keep me calm and focused.  I still need to trim the seam allowances so they look presentable. After much deliberation about how to shorten the sleeves, I finally decided to bite the bullet and undo the complicated cu...

This morning I woke up to see this out my 6th floor window. Amazon.com Widgets For those of you not from New York, this is Local Law 11 at work.  A couple of years before I moved here a Columbia student was killed when a piece of  a building's cornice came loose and landed on her.  In response to that tragedy, Local Law 11 was passed. Local Law 11 requires that every building in the city is inspected every few years and any potentially loose bits of facade are repaired. It's an expensive law to uphold. It creates lots of work for local construction companies and engineers. Ultimately it is a good thing. Other work on my plate currently is altering the kittle I had made last High Holiday season.  The recipient of the kittle came by yesterday.  Frankly, it fit better  than I had hoped. The recipient had a few issues with the kittle . The first was the easiest the address. He hated the buttons which had rhinestones in the centers. ...

Yesterday, the kittle was picked up. Amazon.com Widgets Here it is with the cuffs turned down. And now with the cuffs turned up. Here is the back view.  I was anxious before my client came to pick up the kittle came because after a piece is done, all I can see are the flaws. To both manage my anxiety level and to reduce the giant stack in my ironing pile I ironed most of the linens we used over the holiday. Yes, that is quite a large stack of ironing. We now have clean and pressed tablecloths, napkins and dresser scarves to take us through the next few weeks My client was really happy with the kittle. Her joy helped me to see the kittle with fresh eyes and see what I actually pulled off. I thought that I deserved something of a play day today. I took myself to the museum at FIT. The upstairs gallery has an exhibit called Uniformity. It's an exhibit both of uniforms and fashion inspired by uniforms.  If you can't visit the exhibit visiting...

One of the truly great things about living in New York is that despite the fact that the garment district is smaller each time I go, there are still specialty businesses that cater to those of us who sew.  There are stores that sell nothing but zippers. There are stores that sell only notions. If you want to get a length of fabric pleated you can bring it a pleater who can pleat your fabric in any number of pleating patterns. A couple of years ago my friend Anne Marie and I wandered from the selling floor to the factory end of a trimming business. They were making multi stranded upholstery cording. We were transfixed by the process run on machinery that must have been a century old. The owners of the shop chased us out. They were horrified to find us in the factory. We could have stayed and watched all day. Today I went down to Jonathan Embroidery to get the buttonholes made for the kittle. I had called them earlier in the week to get a sense of the pricing for six buttonh...

the sound-track for my labors. Amazon.com Widgets Shabbat Shalom!