sarah in nyc

Just over a year ago ,our dear friends, Alfie and Judy, were in town from Minneapolis. We invited them and their son David, and his sweetie Arielle for dinner. David is working for a left wing intellectual journal. He has been writing for them and has also been developing their web presence. As we were cleaning up from dinner, David cornered me in the kitchen and asked me why I didn't have a blog.  He explained how incredibly easy it is to start a blog and shamed me into starting this blog. So here it is, just over a year, and more than 14,000 hits later.  I love that some of the folks that read this blog are people I know well in real life, family, friends, sewing buddies. Other readers are people I know well, but only virtually, buddies from the Creative Machine list or from Pattern Review. Some of you are folks who I don't know at all, and I'm delighted to have you visit here. I was wondering if I could ask folks who stop by here how they got to this bl...

Tomorrow is my husband's birthday. He is dreading this birthday ( actually,  he dreads all of them). We are going to a fund raising event tomorrow night at our synagogue so I suggested that tonight's dinner be part of his birthday celebration. As per my husband's wishes, no guests. He  chose the menu. We have having beef, cooked into what we call "Stewart". He also requested potatoes roasted  in olive oil and spices. My older son usually makes this, but since he is in Jerusalem, I will make it instead. The first time he made it was for a Fathers' Day. I had to be away, so together, the kids and I planned a dinner for my husband. I bought the food, and my kids cooked. They made a massive steak, salad and these potatoes. For tonight we  are also serving broccoli, a salad and olives. My husband isn't much of a dessert person, so I will serve his favorite, blood oranges. Luckily, blood oranges are always in season at his birthday. Yes there are gifts ...

"And I will carry you on Eagle's wings", was the verse that really  struck home for Natalee from her Bat- Mitzvah torah reading. So we decided to make that the focal point of her tallit. Lately I have begun the work of designing a tallit/prayer shawl by having my clients try on lengths of raw fabric. My clients seem to divide themselves into two camps, there are the folks who want silky and those who want texture. Natalee was a silky girl. The base of her tallit is ivory colored silk charmeuse. I made the wings out of four layers of metallic/silk organza. I sketched an abstracted eagle wing onto tracing paper, flipped it and traced it's partner from the first sketch. Then, I went over the sketch using my sewing machine threaded with black thread. One normally doesn't think of a sewing machine as a drawing tool, but that's exactly how I used it. After establishing the design, I cut away different layers of the organza, some from the front and some from...

So, here it is, my second try at getting Deborah's kippah right. You can see the obsessive quilting.The decorative trim was fun to do. I chalked a line on the quilted fabric, measuring from the fold. Then, I lay a length of maroon velvet ribbon on the chalked line.  I embroidered the line of diamonds using the adorable stitch on my machine. Yes, the embroidery is both functional and decorative. My history of architecture professor would be proud. Not only does the embropidery echo that Bauhaus credo of "form follows function", it also echoes the OCD quilting.The two rows of copper colored soutache were couched using a three stepped zig zag stitch. Many thanks to my model, who was not a pill.

Today ( and yesterday) I pretended that I was drawing with my sewing machine and made feathers for Natalee's, Wings tallit. I really enjoyed how easy it was to adjust the width of my stitches, making it easy to taper the tips of the feathers down to nothing, giving the whole thing a more naturalistic feel. Natalee was adopted from China. When kids come from a mixed background, as Natalee does I like to try to aknowledge their place of orgin in the tallit.  I don't want the tallit to look costume-ey. But being able to nod to the birth family at this important milestone is probably a good thing. Natalee liked the idea but didn't want the tallit too look too Chinese. We found the prefect solution in my fabric stash.  This Chinese brocade silk  fabric has large flowers as part of the brocade design. Some are blue, and the others are green. We thought that having the blue flowers in the center of each corner piece--with just a hint of the red background would be pe...

So Deborah did love the black kippah I had made her. Unfortunately, it was a bit too small. I had no more of the wonderful black textured fabric. I did have a plain black silk. I thought that the silk satin would be improved with more texture. So I began quilting diagonal lines a presser-foot's width apart creating a gid of squished diamonds along the entire strip of 45" x7 " inch piece of fabric. I kept thinking as I worked on thins that my daughter would take one look at this and say,  "Having an OCD day, Mama? ". Not exactly. I find doing this sort of work alternatively irritatingly boring and oddly soothing. You may think to ask why I chose such a labor intensive way of adding texture. I wonder myself. Actually, I think that this Chanel-bag like quilting will suit Deborah well. Deborah is one of those women, who even if she wore a tie dye t-shirt and a tiered peasant skirt would look like she stepped out of a Brooks Brother's ad. This quilting will sui...

My youngest, like his father, and unlike his siblings isn't much of an eater. So when he makes a request for a patricular food, particularly when it is home made rather than the packaged garbage that he usually loves, I will nearly always try to honor that request. Most weeks we eat chicken or meat for Shabbat. My two big kids adore meat, and for my culinarily traditional husband too, Shabbat means meat. This week though, our dinner guests are vegetarians. Last night I was looking through cookbooks for ideas  for what to serve tonight. My youngest suggested home made noodles. I had made them for the first time several months ago. When I had made them , we had a quart of sour milk hanging around so I also made a soft riccota like cheese. So my son requested that I also make the cheese. I agreed to make the noodles, but left the cheese question open. After I put up the challa, I got to work making the noodle dough. It's just three eggs and two cups of flou...