sarah in nyc

Some people drink when they are stressed. Others, eat chocolate. When I am stressed, I make clothes. (Well, I also eat, but not chocolate) A couple of summers ago, as my mother-in -law was going into what we later realized was her final decline, I was lucky enough to discover  Kabballa Man and his trove of wonderful fabrics at less than $5/yard. I remember the difficult day where we got my mother-in law out of the horrible hospital where they were doing their level best to kill her, and into a better facility. We started that day early in the morning, and I finally got home at midnight . The next day I went downtown to Kabblla Man's and went wild.. After a frantic bout of retail therapy, my wallet was about $80 lighter and I had lots of fabric to play with. As my mother-in-lawgot sicker and sicker, and the decisions we had to make got harder and harder, I produced more and more garments.Everything I made during that period had a 1970's vibe to it. I realize in ...

Today our youngest graduated from middle school. For so many years, I was the mother of young kids. That is now no longer true. I am now the mother of old kids. All of them are old enough to baby sit. Right after graduation, my husband picked up a car and drove my youngest to camp. We are now down to just two kids at home.

  Many years ago, my niece referred to the sorts of clothing that vegans might wear as "vegetarian clothing". Normally I don't wear vegetarian duds. However, it's really hot and sticky out. It's too hot to wear the knit dresses that I usually wear. I purchased the fabric for this dress at the African market on 116 Th Street several weeks back. The women I bought the fabric from, seemed shocked that I would be making the dress myself. Many of the printed African fabrics come with a really heavy dose of sizing. I think the fabrics work better for head wraps in their stiff unwashed state. Although I find the shiny sizing glaze on the fabric to be attractive, I really did want the dress I was planning to make to actually have a bit more drape. I washed the fabric and it has the weight and hand of a coarse quilting cotton. That's still just fine for a summer dress. Next, I had to decide what the dress would look like. Last seek I purchased "Design ...

Today is hot and sticky. And it isn't even noon yet. Realizing that the day that the day would only get worse, I decided to deal with the growing mountain or ironing even before I showered today. Today's stack of table cloths, from top to bottom : White linen cloth embroidered by my cousin's mother in law. I love the basket of fruit embroidery. the crocheted edging in multicolored cotton yarn, less so.I also love how well the cloth takes to ironing. Just below that, Ikea upholstery cotton that I made into a table cloth a few winters back. Then a pink linen that came from my mother's stash.I hate ironing that cloth It's just hard to get a nice press on that one. We stopped using that cloth when I was five or so. Nostalgia is the only reason I use the cloth. It reminds me of our then pink kitchen and the Formica table with it's matching wire chairs. My mother is big on setting an elegant table.I tend to set a funky table. I don't have elegant dishes. mine a...

 When I was in college, my friend Alan used to tell us how his family fortune was based on a patent held by his grandparents. The patent was for a material that could be used to create machine made lace. This material could be stitched to recreate traditional lace patterns and then when the stitching was complete, the material could be washed away leaving the lace like fabric. My friend Alan used to say that this is what created the lace table cloth industry. Now, it is possible for home sewers to purchase the same sort of stuff. It has been on the market for a long time. It is sold as wash away stabilizer. When you pull the roll out of the package the stabilizer feels like a rubbery plastic.when it gets wet it feels like gelatin. Over the years I have read several articles about using the fabric to create not just traditional looking lace, lots of people use machine embroidery motifs to do just that but wilder more organic looking lace similar to the work of the designers tha...

of the Ultrasuede challa cover. I added lots more flowers, many of them with my pretty little forget-me-not stamp that I carved out of an eraser. I used Shiva paint stick with the stamp. I love how I can add shading to the stamp. I also painted in lots of details by hand. It never fails to amaze me how a little bit of color variation makes a leaf or flower look much more natural. I had decided to carve the edge of the edge of the challa cover with a tool I had bought at Michael's. It is an X-acto blade attached to a heating element. I purchased it with the hopes that it would create a really clean edge. Perhaps the Ultrasuede was too thick for the blade, but I found using it to be really frustrating. So I pulled out my trusty soldering iron and found that despite the fat point on the soldering iron, I got a cleaner edge with that tool. I painted a line of blue around the edge to show that the meandering edge is in fact intentional. Now I have to wrap up the challa cover and mak...

We are going to a wedding next weekend. The groom is the son of dear friends and is a pretty amazing human being. His bride is his match in the wonderful department. Last night I got to work on a challa cover to make as a wedding gift. The text comes from a liturgical poem recited Friday nights in synagogue. In the poem, the Sabbat is referred to as a bride, it seems like a fitting line to use on a wedding gift challa cover. I decided to use Ultrasuede for this piece. It feels so good to paint on Ultrasuede. I also like that it is so easy to care for. Once the colors are set, the challa cover can be hand washed like a pair of stockings and hung up to dry. It's beautiful, isn't it? Actually it looks great, unless you can read Hebrew. I must have gotten distracted while I was doing the calligraphy. When my husband came home, he immediately noticed that I had left out a letter. AAARRRGGGHH!!! I thought about cutting the border out  and then redoing the lettering. I seemed quic...