sarah in nyc

 When Bonnie met with me several weeks ago about making her tallit she spoke about wanting the stripes to resemble the ocean from her childhood on the Massachusetts coast. The beach we visited most often in my childhood was just a few miles away in Westport, Massachusetts, the spectacular Horseneck Beach. I haven't been there in more than thirty five years but the colors of that water are deeply imprinted in my brain. I know that water not from looking at photos but from being inside of that water with long strands of seaweed wrapping themselves around my legs. I know that water from being tumbled by the waves, from floating on top of that water from having my mouth filled with that water. I had dyed the grosgrain ribbon that borders the ocean dyed silk to look like sky---to tie in with the atara. I used the scallop stitch on my machine to look like ripples of water. I used more of the silk that I had dyed to look like the water off the south coast of Massachusetts   for ...

My childhood friend Rachely has a new phone with a camera and has been posting beautiful nature photos mostly from her neighborhood on Facebook. Her lovely photos have sparked a conversation between Rachely and her friends  about honesty and photo editing. I have been using a digital camera for a long time now. One of my frustrations with a digital camera, actually with cameras, in general, is that they don't always capture what your eye is seeing. I might be drawn to take a photo because of a particularly beautiful quality of light. Once I take the photo the quality that drew my eye, might be missing in the photo. I feel that this is an honest use of photo editing. With the magic of photo editing, I can show what it was that my eye actually saw. I have also discovered over time that while digital cameras are wonderful, they have fairly limited digital brains. I bump up to the limited abilities of my digital camera when photographing some of my work. ...

 I have been working on more wedding related stuff. Amazon.com Widgets The kippot are all completed. I think I finished the shawls. Yes, they need a better pressing but don't worry, the attendants won't look like they slept in their finery. This is the stencil that I used for the scarves. No, I didn't use the elephant. The stencil itself isn't perfect (I would have preferred a more complex design) but it does well enough. Surprisingly the hardest bit of all of this turquoise and gold fabulousness has been creating the pocket squares.  I have experienced several failures along the way. One layer of this silk is NOT fun to work with. The pocket squares are all going to be self-lined. For some reason I don't quite understand, precutting the pocket squares and stenciling them works less well than stenciling a long length of fabric and then cutting it up. So after much too much time, I have three pocket squares completed and I think s...

Our friends Ira and Ruth just told us that they have a new grand son. My cousin in Israel and his wife just had a baby.  It’s time to make baby gifts.   I had thought that  a dolman sleeved baby jacket like this one, Francis Blondin baby jacket , would be just the ticket.  They are easy to make and work well for babies and are easy to put on and take off. I looked through my stash and found a length of baby blue fine whale corduroy that I had gotten in a Fabric Mart mystery bundle a few years back.   I thought that the fabric would feel nice but looked a bit dull. I decided that a stencil  would jazz up the fabric. I drew a small collection of stars on a small piece of cardstock. I then cut the stars out with  an X-Acto knife.   I used a blue oil paint stick and a stuff brush with the stencil. This is the result. I will be able to cut two jackets out of the yardage.  I still have to heat set the color and decide on the lin...