Stitching a Story by Priscilla Brown

 

Anna Marshall, country town mayor and alpaca breeder, would love to have time to sew, 

but what with her civic duties and farm tasks, she barely has a minute to herself. 

Until a sexy television entrepreneur blows into town...

https://books2read/Sealing-the-Deal

 

Alongside writing contemporary romance fiction, my creative output includes working with textiles -- knitting, embroidery, felt making, hand and machine sewing. Although it's winter here in New South Wales, I am getting ahead with making a summer dress, inspired by summer fabrics in a discount sale in my favourite fabric store. While I can design and create various styles of bags, I don't have the skill to make a pattern for a garment, so I bought one and the instructed amount of cotton fabric for the short-sleeved dress. With pattern and fabric neatly pressed and spread out on the dining room table, I arranged the pieces of tissue paper according to the pattern instructions for the size I need. And found that the given length of fabric wasn't quite enough. It didn't have a definite 'this way up', but I had to pay attention to the fact that this was a dress, and back and front must hang looking as if they belonged together. Running out of patience with placing and pinning the sections, I was tempted to put the whole lot in the bin.

Instead, I eventually managed the layout. Fingers hypothetically crossed, breath held, I cut the fabric. This challenge successfully accomplished without any damage, I stitched it all together by machine, with neat seams securely fastened on and off.

I could have written more than one scene of my current novel-in-progress in this time. In fact, the whole of this process was for me similar to constructing  a story. A piece of fabric as the idea becomes the basis, with the characters and activities as the pattern, to be arranged and re-arranged as the plot develops, beginning and ending appropriately secured. I enjoy moving these story pieces around more than I do when attempting to create a garment.  This undisciplined method would be a disaster with dressmaking!

 

To all sewers, you'll be making a better job of your work than I did! I'm returning to my story writing!

 

Best wishes, Priscilla

 

https://bwlpublishing.ca 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com