sarah in nyc

These are sixteen scarves that I have cut out of mostly silk but with some lengths of linen and rayon thrown into the mix.and rayon  All of the scarves have been given a perl edge by my server. Please ignore the passive voice here(it is not an accurate representation of events as they occurred). The scarves did not hop onto the serger and emerge perfectly hemmed. This was the result of several hours worth of work yesterday.  The scarves will all be decorated with block printing  by members of a teen and senior art class that I have been teaching the past few weeks. The fabrics I edged have all long been part of my stash. Some were purchased for particular pieces for clients. Others came to me via the "Grandma who used to sew is moving to assisted living or died", route. Some are fabrics that showed up in my stash via  Fabric Mart Mystery Bundles . My serger can be cranky and temperamental. My serger does not like change and can get really balky when I have...

I made this table cloth probably five years ago. It's made out of a black cotton pique. It's edged in pom pom trim. Yes, I know that it is totally silly. My friend, Mary-Katherine grew up mostly in Texas. She was having a pom-pom trim moment. It made her laugh. She was also a fairly constant guest at our table. She asked that I trim my cloth with the pop-poms. It was all the more amusing because I had to use three different colors of trim. My youngest has been complaining about this table cloth for the past several months. Each time he sets the table for Shabbat using this cloth he points out how spotted it is,  and how frequent laundering has not been kind to it. He is right. The cloth has been looking ratty. I have been hiding it's rattyness by covering the center of the cloth with one of my smaller vintage cloths. The wild 1940's printed cloths look great on top of the black. Today though, I decided to take more drastic measures. I cut the cloth up into napkins. I...

A big shawl tallit is seen on both the right and the wrong side of the fabric. This works just fine for a traditional woven tallit. The woven stripes can be seen both on the face and the reverse of the fabric. When you work with a tallit that is sewn , or pieced, rather than woven this does not naturally occur. I find tallitot with what I think of as naked undersides to be rather distressing. Maybe it is an OCD thing, but they really bother me in a visceral way. Those tallitot just seem WRONG. I admit that according to halacha /Jewish law there is nothing wrong with a tallit that is blank on the underside. But to me it feels like something that ought not be done. My neurosis on this matter has led to having to figure out how to construct tallitot that read as stripes on both sides, yet don't have nasty raw edges. Over the years I have come up with several solutions. I had once done a tallit where I hemmed each stripe before attaching it to the next stripe with a three step zi...

This tallit is being made for a bat mitzvah girl who shares my name. The tallit will be made out of the pictured fabrics, a chocolate brown silk noil and a pink shantung. Sarah loves these colors. With the exception of the colors, this tallit will look far more like a traditional tallit than say Sara Xing's . I ordered the brown silk from the nice folks at Thai Silks. Finding a chocolate brown silk is harder than one would think. I have been buying from the folks at Thai Silks for years. Normally, I might have just ordered the fabric over the internet . But because I needed such a specific shade, I called up and had the person who took my order help me. I wanted a Hershey Bar brown, not a greenish brown, not a yellow brown but Hershey Bar brown. Rosi at Thai compared fabrics for me and sent me just the right color. I was so relieved when I opened the package. When I met with Sarah, we talked about texts that she loves. One of the verses that means a great deal to her comes...

I suppose that I could pretend that each time I touch fabric, what comes out is prefection itself. But the reality is that I make mistakes all of the time. I mean, all of the time. Take Sara Xing's tallit, as an example. Some pieces of the tallit came together just so easily. Piecing the scenes, was frankly, a piece of cake. Not one curse passed my lips as I was making them. Cutting the black silk has been hard. In order to get the cutting line exact I have to pull a thread and then cut along the line left by the missing thread. Unfortunately, the silk is woven out of so many fine strands of silk that it is really hard to see that nearly invisible line so I can cut it. If I pretend to have x-ray vision it helps a bit. Attaching the black silk "frames" around then pictorial scenes I ran into trouble of my own making. For years I had struggles with a lemon of a serger. My repair guy helped me avoid troubles by fixing the blade in the on only position. The serger was like ...