Sewing project no. 35 of 35 - Hussif (roll-up sewing kit)

And, here is the grand finale. Project #1 was a baby hat; Project #35 is a sewing kit so that baby can sew her own 35 projects.
It was a present on the occasion of her completing sefer Yehoshua (Joshua) in English, with the Me'am Loez commentary for her birthday (we do siyyumim-which-are-more-or-less-birthday-parties in this family), which would take you or me about a week but was a major project for this kid.

It was a surprise. Loops goes through phases alternating pink-pink-pink with I'm-tired-of-pink-my-favorite-colors-are-orange-and-green. Right now we are in a pink phase so it had to be pink pink pink.

I could have bought her a sewing kit that comes in a cunning box with latches and trays, but I didn't see anything I liked.
It's not as if Loops has been clamoring to sew. So everything had to be as pretty and pleasant and painless to use as possible. I wanted a kit with good scissors and a retractable tape measure.
Push-button tape measures are even better than push-button umbrellas, and my mother carries a supply of them in her purse to amuse babies she meets in the park, but for some reason they haven't entered popular imagination as the tape measure in the way that when you think of an umbrella you automatically think of a retractable one.
So, I couldn't find a pre-packaged sewing kit that contained good scissors and a retractable tape measure, and although it occurred to me afterward that I could have bought a tackle box (with cunning latches and trays) for less than the fabric, I made Loops a hussif, aka housewife: a roll-up sewing kit, with a designated pocket for everything.

You can see historical examples of them here or here.
Here's mine:

Here it is all rolled up and being pink and satiny.

Then you untie and unroll it and it's full of pockets.

It contains:
1 pair Fiskar sewing scissors
Thread in white, black, pink, yellow, and tomato red (colors selected by recipient)
1 retractable tape measure
1 pair stork scissors. These are more or less redundant to the Fiskars but it is nice to have a tiny pair of scissors for delicate snipping, and besides, every kid should have stork scissors.
1 seam ripper
1 wand magnet
1 collection pearl-headed pins and fine needles, stuffed in a heart-shaped pincushion which is not too big to squeeze them out of when they inevitably get lost in it.
For an adult I would substitute glass-headed silk pins, which slide through fabric like butter, but Loops loves my pearly ones.

To make it:

I took a piece of quilting cotton 40 x 19 inches, folded it the long way ("hot dog"), ironed fusible interfacing on the inside to give it some heft, and sewed it shut.
Now I have a slightly stiffened pink rectangle which measures 40 x 9.5 in.

I draped aqua fabric over the scissors and cut it to size, so the dimension of that piece is (width of scissors' widest point plus a couple of inches) x 9.5 in.
I cut a slimmer rectangle of the same fabric (about 2" x 9.5") to be the lid for the pocket.

Same thing for thread.

I used two adhesive velcro dots to close each pocket. This works: it keeps the scissors & thread in, and isn't annoying to open.

The heart-shaped pockets were, again, draped to fit the tape measure and stork scissors; I cut two pink hearts and sewed them to two yellow satin hearts so they have satin lining and I didn't have to finish the edges. I didn't include room for velcro to close these pockets, so they don't close, which means you get stork scissors in your lap every time you open the hussif.

I made a narrow, side-opening pocket for the seam ripper. This works.

I took a strip of magenta cotton with finished edges and put velcro on it so you can thread it through the hole in the magnet handle and stick it to itself. This works.

The pincushion was a heart with finished edges, sewn to the base and stuffed with animal stuffing. This works well enough; you still get pricked (Loops will put the pins in sideways), but it's easy to use.

I rounded off the bottom corners to be pretty.

I pinned on all the pockets, sewed along the base of each one, basted down the sides, sewed some pink trim across a few that looked like they would benefit from decoration, and sandwiched the whole perimeter in pink alachson (can you tell I like that word?) -- bias tape.

Then I rolled it up and tacked a giant pink satin ribbon in the middle to the back, so the hussif ties shut with a bow.

If I were to do it again I think I'd add a pocket to store all the "cabbage" Loops always claims from my sewing projects and saves for some unknown future project.
I'd also roll it up the other way, I think; it feels counter-intuitive to unroll from the bottom.
These are minor points.
We're pleased. It had the desired effect: Loops suddenly has all sorts of ideas for the things she wants to sew, now that she has pretty pockets full of pretty sewing supplies.

Yay.

35 by 35 sewing recap

Looking back, here's the list.

1. Baby hat
2. Baby jumpsuit
*3. Teddy bear (and explanation of what 35 by 35 is about)
*4. Bekishe robe
5. Baby bloomers
6. Girls' costume dress (Queen of Lemons)
7. Baby shoes
8. Edwardian skirt
8b. Baby dress (pink gingham)
9. Skirt (interview)
10. Girls' dress (Gatsby)
11. Pinafore
12. Ultra-accurate 19th century doll
13. Bog coat
14. Eustace Tilley costume
15. Chemise
16. Girls' dress - Gatsby again, this time in chartreuse
17. Map of the world as a skirt
*18. Wisteria doll dress
19. Victorian wrapper
20. Petticoat, size small
21. Petticoat, size smaller
22. Fringed shawl
23. Mustard insta-skirt
24. Russet insta-skirt
25. Baby bonnet
26. Purple swim skirt - circle skirt
27. Butterfly wings
28. Pocket doll - first draft
29. Pocket doll - second draft
30. Pocket doll - just right
31. Sky-colored half-circle skirt for Pesach
32. Frock coat - One Sewing Project to Rule Them All
33. Girls' Victorian dress
34. Baby hat -- same pattern as no. 1
34b. I made another teddy bear. I forgot to post it. We'll leave it and 8b uncounted, because two of the earlier projects went unfinished when I felt they had served their purpose, and now I think that's cheating.
*35. Hussif sewing kit

All 35 have been documented on this blog, in the link right above them if they don't have their own. Asterisks indicate pictures.

35 by 35 no. 33

No. 33, Girl's Dress.

It occurs to me that I haven't joined in the HSF at all this year, other than to exclaim about the frock coat; and that wasn't even one of the challenges.

I actually did another piece of historical sewing this year and it made me fabulously happy: I made Persimmon a dress from the Sewing Academy's "Girls' Dresses" pattern.

I never know what I think about posting my family's closet on the Internet, but you can see examples of other people's work using this pattern on the forum connected with the Sewing Academy site (here, for instance).

There actually aren't very clear illustrations included in the pattern of how it will look when it's finished; but I've worked from Sewing Academy publications before and I'm always pleased with the results, so I just marched.

Oh, boy! I think I'm done buying children's dress patterns forever.

Well, for a week.

I'm so pleased with how this one turned out. I think I'll use it for everything. I think we'll have SA-250 Girls' Dresses for dinner.

I made the gathered bodice with a yoke and put tucks in the skirt (one thing Elizabeth Stewart Clark is wonderful about is providing detailed instructions -- yes, it should be fairly obvious how to make tucks; but yes, she walks you step-by-step. by step. by step. through the process). That was something new.

Another new experience was piping the neckline, which involved making bias tape. It turned out not to be scary at all, and it doesn't consume nearly as much fabric as I imagined; I pieced all my bias tape out of tiny scraps.

"Bias tape" is one of those words you do not learn in high school Hebrew.

I remember calling the sewing supply store in Geula and trying to explain what I wanted. You know, you take the fabric, and you lay it out, and you cut it into strips, not on the square, but... uh...

...

...

...

"Alachson!" exclaimed my interlocutor.

Yeah. Yeah. That. Alachson. Thanks.

So, I made my own alachson this time.

And poof! Persimmon is a perfect Victorian child. Fabulous.

Loops wants the same dress but with pleats instead of gathers.

Pleats!

I guess I'll be learning how to make pleats.

HSF:

The Challenge: I missed the whole year... I won't link this one to the HSF; let's call it a submission for Out of Your Comfort Zone. I still never sew anything that isn't.

Material: sage cotton gingham from Denver Fabrics. I think it looks like kitchen curtains. But as a dress, I like it.

Pattern: SA-250 Girls' Dresses, from the Sewing Academy.

Year: I'm going to say 1853 for the pleasure of it.

Notions: Hooks and eyes only. Hooks and eyes are great for the timid among us because you don't have to cut a hole in anything. You can rip them out and move them.

How historically accurate is it? Impeccably!

Hours to complete: some scattered around the country

First worn: just for a regular Shabbos.

Total cost: I ordered more fabric than I needed, even for both girls. I foresee more kitchen-curtain-colored garments in our future.

Oh, and No. 34 I made another baby hat from Voor Nop.

This time I finished all the seams with a sort of improvised flat-fell. Yay.

The Place to Take Children in Portland that You Haven't Thought Of

I've had occasion recently to visit a couple of shiva houses and I've been thinking of King Solomon's statement (Koheles 7:2) that it's better to visit a house of mourning than one of feasting. I was kind of reluctant to visit the first one -- "I am going so the mourner can talk about the person who passed away but others there are going to make small talk, it's a long walk, it's raining, there's a lion in the road, do I HAVE TO??" and yes, yes I did, so I went; and I was glad I did; the mourner was telling stories about her mother, and what it is like when someone passes away, and what it's like for the family, and it was a meaningful experience for all of us.

Fast forward to a recent trip to Portland.

My mother proposed that we ride the tram that flies across the city on a cable, which was built ten years ago to transport hospital staff from one OHSU campus to another. The ride is a few minutes long and quite beautiful, and we all enjoyed it, although Loops thought it would be more like a roller coaster and said she thought it ought to bump a little more. You can see all the mountains, even Mt. Adams; and I noticed for the first time that Portland's Mt. Tabor closely resembles the original Har Tavor in Israel; and the area below the tram is the old turn-of-the-century Jewish neighborhood of Portland, which is nice to look down on; and if you, reader, are wondering along with everyone else who rides the tram what the big round building you passed on the OHSU tram is, I can tell you: it's a synagogue built by Jews from the Isle of Rhodes, still in occasional use and known affectionately to the community as "the beehive."

Once we got off the tram we stayed in the station for another cycle to watch how the mechanism works (I'm glad we rode it before I saw that the whole thing boils down to just three wires - it's very elegant) and then we discovered that a set of stairs leads down from the tram to other parts of the hospital.

The best banister to slide down in Portland is the one in the Hilton hotel downtown; the second banister disappeared in a remodeling years ago and the third (the Keller Auditorium) and fourth (the Arlene Schnitzer) are nothing too out of the common; so I am pleased to tell you that the new banisters up at the OHSU tram station are almost as good as the one at the Hilton, better than any other banisters in town for sliding down.

Should you be weighing the merits of taking children for a ride on the tram (and down the banisters), the factor you haven't considered is that the tram station was built as an addition to the Doernbecher children's hospital and that of all the wonderful things we did that morning (it's only early July but the salal berries up there are already ripe -- OH JOY), walking through a children's hospital en route was an unexpected but very important experience for my kids.

There are exhibits in the halls of art by the children in the hospital and their families. A thousand paper cranes... sneakers the children designed that were made by Nike... and installations in memory of others.
It's all very beautiful and well-designed (children's hospitals usually are) and it served as a good opening for conversation with Loops.

Highly recommended.

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for that is the end of every man, and the living shall lay it to his heart.

בטוֹב לָלֶכֶת אֶל בֵּית אֵבֶל מִלֶּכֶת אֶל בֵּית מִשְׁתֶּה בַּאֲשֶׁר הוּא סוֹף כָּל הָאָדָם וְהַחַי יִתֵּן אֶל לִבּוֹ:

35 by 35 no. 32: Frock Coat - !

32. Frock Coat.
This really deserves a post of its own, I'm so pleased with it.

One of the aesthetic perks of orthodox Judaism is that we've never entirely discarded the frock coat. Especially in Israel, many outstanding Torah scholars (and married men in the Ponovezh yeshiva) still wear them.

To me the acme of sewing is frock coats. They are tailored, lined, and beautiful; and to get a good one you employ all kinds of exotic techniques, e.g. ironwork -- shaping wool with an iron -- which is more sculpture than sewing. Sewing a frock coat is not even on my wish list.

Nevertheless, frock coats lately took on a certain urgency to me because of a discrepancy in children's clothing. It's not hard to find nice dresses for girls -- there will always be someone in the world selling full-skirted jumpers. But even formal little boy clothing almost always looks to me like loungewear - polo shirts and cargo pants, &c. So from the time we had a member of this family in need of little boy clothing (ahem! mazel tov), I have been thinking that this child REALLY needs either a smock or a frock coat; and since smocking is a delicate operation, I settled on a frock coat as the simpler project. Because in my head that makes sense.

I have the Laughing Moon pattern, #109, which came in very handy for understanding what shapes I needed and how to fit them together. A frock coat is really a beautifully constructed garment; there is a single pleat giving the whole thing its frockiness.

The victim was asleep. I laid a roll of tracing paper on him, hoped he was symmetrical (since I wasn't going to wake him up to get the measurements in back), and scribbled.

Lesson no. 1: Swedish tracing paper, which is almost a fabric itself, is a wonderful thing for drafting patterns for small children who think tracing paper is lunch.

Three Swedish tracing paper muslins later (Lesson no. 2: children are not symmetrical), I had a frock coat.
I left the back seam closed all the way down, since I thought tails might impede crawling. This is a problem roshei yeshiva tend not to have.
I used a single layer of cotton. We'll save ironwork for another lifetime, I think.
I sprinkled buttons all over it and off we went.

Of all my sewing projects so far, this might be my favorite. Frock coats are beautiful things. Frock coat construction is a beautiful feat of engineering. More than anything else, though, the entire time I was sewing, there floated through my mind the classes of my teachers in Israel who wear them -- Rabbi Orlowek, for instance.

Here are the HSF details:

The Challenge: To be honest, I didn't make this for an HSF challenge. It's just another foray into historical sewing. I'm sure no one ever dressed a baby in a frock coat.
Material: Navy blue cotton.
Pattern: Laughing Moon no. 109... sort of.
Year: The present, if you're Jewish (and an adult -- making a frock for a baby is just my idea of a good time), and 1870 or so, if you're not.
Notions: Ninety gazillion buttons.
How historically accurate is it? The shapes are all there but, you know, it's baby-sized and unlined and cotton. So... not very.
Hours to complete: about a week.
First worn: Purim. But he wore it every Shabbos after Purim until he outgrew it.
Total cost: just the buttons.

35 by 35 nos. 28-31: doll, doll, doll (do we see a pattern here) (no pun intended), skirt.

Sewing again

Today's discovery in the Wait, What? Dept.; also, Jewish utopian communities, farming and otherwise

"Jew Valley is a basin in Lake County, Oregon, in the United States.

Jew Valley was named for a colony of Jewish farmers who settled there in the early 20th century."
(Thanks Wikipedia)


Wait, what? I grew up in Oregon and I never heard of this.
Apparently the colony, founded by 25 families 'including a shochet,' experienced success for a few years before disbanding.


II.
Speaking of utopian Jewish farming communities... there's a new one in the offing:

The "Frum Farm"

I spoke with the family behind it & it seems to be quite a serious endeavor.

III.
Of course, to me one paradigmatic utopian Jewish community that I never got to see (born just slightly too young; nuts!) is Rav Bulman zt"l's kehilla in Migdal haEmek.
Here's one article that mentions it briefly: by Mrs. T. Katz.

IV.
And before that there was Frankfurt.
This is a wonderful, sparkling article about Frankfurt: Hermann Schwab's memoirs