Chaotic Good: A Book Review

Chaotic Good / Whitney Gardner
New York: Knopf, c2018.
256 p.

I picked this one up solely on the strength of that cover. Just look at it! So much fun. Who wouldn't want to dress up like a paper doll? I wish they'd sold this with it's own Cameron paper doll, including that marvellous donut print dress :)

Main character Cameron is a cosplayer and sewist who dreams of getting into CalTech with her costume portfolio. After a recent win for her costume at a ComicCon, however, she's being harassed online by male comic fans who don't think she's an authentic comic fan (quelle surprise).

Alongside this harassment, which she doesn't share with her family, she's just moved from Portland to Eugene, so now has a summer without friends nearby either. So her focus is just to sew up a storm.

However, she encounters sexism in real life as she heads into the new-to-her local comic shop and is mansplained by the guy working there. She vows not to go back, but since she shortly after gets an online order for a costume, she needs to return to do some research. On her twin brother Cooper's suggestion she dresses up like a boy to head back, and magically everything is now peachy keen. She begins to get drawn into the comic shop's world when they begin a D&D game, and she's accepted as one of the boys.

There's romance, humour, ambition, family dynamics, and lots of sewing in this book, all reasons I really enjoyed it. The story is fast paced, creative and super entertaining for anyone with geeky interests like comics, D&D, or sewing! I am so clueless about D&D that I had no idea the title referred to the game until halfway through the book. So it was definitely more the sewing aspect that appealed to me at the start - obviously!

There were a few things about the book that I questioned upon reflection. Cameron is very conveniently given a non-gendered name to work with, and is not very girly -- she has no bosom to speak of and can easily disguise herself as a boy -- gender is very binary here. Also, she is supposed to be dedicated to sewing her portfolio for the CalTech application, but ends up sewing mostly when she's upset and overtired (and as any sewist knows that's usually a recipe for disaster but Cameron always ends up with a triumph, I don't know how she does it!). She's too distracted by comics and D&D and Lincoln, one of the other players, to sew terribly often.

But otherwise, there was a great mix of diverse characters in this book, some wonderful older characters (like Lincoln's gran), and lots to think about in the storyline. This would make a great group read for teens, but I also just really enjoyed it as a sewing themed read.

Threads: the Delicate Life of John Craske

Threads: the Delicate Life of John Craske / Julia Blackburn

London: Jonathan Cape, c2015.

352 p.

I first heard about this book in the bibliography of a craft book I was studying, and thought it sounded intriguing enough to track down via Interlibrary Loan. It delivered, though not in the way I was first expecting.

It is a delicate biography, mostly because it isn't one at all. The author decides to write about this intriguing character, John Craske (b1881, d1943) but finds that there isn't all that much to discover. The book is about more than Craske himself; it's also about her search for him -- the places she goes to do her research, the people she encounters along the way, related to Craske or not, and her own life story is inextricably linked to the narrative, as her husband dies during the course of her writing this book.

It is fascinating and absorbing reading.

John Craske himself, the backbone of the book, was an English fisherman from Norfolk who suffered from an undiagnosed disease (they think now it may have been some kind of diabetes). He would fall into long periods of invalidism, in which he seemed not to be in the world at all. His wife encouraged him to paint in order to engage with the world, and feel as if he was on the open seas again, which he missed. Visitors noted that all the surfaces of their house were covered with paintings propped up, and even painted right onto the doors and windowsills. When John became too ill to be able to paint, his wife set him onto embroidery, which he could do from his bed.

His embroideries were fresh and unique; he used his painting techniques to make embroidered images of the seascapes he loved. As a stitcher myself I could see how these were unusual for the time, being freeform and individual. He uses his wools and threads to indicate wind, waves, grasses, and more; the movement in his stitching is extraordinary. He was working on a huge panel depicting Dunkirk when he died, leaving only a square of the sky undone.

Blackburn examines not only his life history and the ways in which he turned to painting and then embroidery, but also what happened to his works after he'd died, and the ways in which his reputation was both made and forgotten. Integral to his brief popularity were the writers Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, who discovered him in his small village, and championed his art after that -- partly out of admiration and partly out of a feeling that he and his wife really needed some financial support.

Blackburn also visits a couple of small regional museums and institutions that hold a few of Craske's remaining works, finding them poorly stored, not exhibited, or shown a lot of care. They seem to treat them as the output of a local artisan, not worth too much attention. I hope that this book can at least inspire those places to preserve Craske's work for the future; they are original, with a individual viewpoint.

The book as a whole feels wild and windy, with a lot of open spaces to think and ponder. One of the things John Craske said about being out on the ocean in a small boat was that it made you feel like a small bit of the world; this book's wide-ranging interest and narrative structure also makes you, the reader, feel like one small point in a huge tapestry of life. This was a wonderful, rambling discovery.

(first posted at The Indextrious Reader)

The Fashion Committee: a novel

Time for another "Text Talk" book review! The Fashion Committee is a great book for sewists who are also readers, especially if you love teen fiction. 

I've read many of Canadian author Susan Juby's other teen & adult novels and enjoyed them, but this one has quickly become my favourite! Maybe it's because of the theme: fashion. In this book fashion design & enthusiasm for Making takes top billing.

The chapters go back and forth between the viewpoints of Charlie Dean, a fashion-obsessed teen dying to get into the fancy local Green Pastures Academy of Art and Applied Design, via this year's fashion scholarship contest, and John Thomas-Smith, a young man whose first love is really metalwork but reluctantly throws his hat in the ring for the fashion competition because it's his last chance to get into the Academy.
Charlie is a bit of an oddball in her school; she dresses "like an old lady" according to others. To herself, though, she is stylish and chic, following the dictates of Diana Vreeland, fashion diva (which just made me love her more). Her chapters open with a "Thought" which is part Vreeland, part Stuart Smalley -- and the tone is perfectly attuned to vintage style books.

Charlie designs a glorious, architectural dress for her father's new girlfriend, who she is slowly warming up to. Charlie's dad is a rehabbed drug addict, and so Charlie is always on edge about the possibility of him returning to the drug life alongside his usual sketchy girlfriends. The uncertainty of Charlie's life, emotionally, financially, practically, is drawn clearly, and her strength of conviction comes through in her determination to get what she wants. 

John, meanwhile, lives with his grandparents who are sweet and supportive. He doesn't know his father, and his mother works in a city far away, seeing him just once in a while; he has a few anger issues as a result. He has a best friend and a long-time girlfriend & the three of them are a solid trio of average teen life. As this fashion competition ramps up, though, and John gets serious about actually competing, his vision of what's possible in his life changes. And this necessarily changes the relationship between the three of them; they don't want him to change, to leave the world they've all constructed. John sees other artists of all disciplines at the Academy and realizes he does have ambitions and that artsy people are not the dorks he and his friends have always made them out to be.

So these two manage their complicated home lives even as they are rhapsodizing about fashion and ambition and possibility. The voices of each character are distinctive, realistic, and enjoyable. Juby studied fashion design herself (briefly, as she notes in the afterword) but as a result, the love of fabric and texture and design is authentic and absolutely real. I could feel my stitching mind racing after some of the descriptions of what people were making -- what fabric did they use? How could I copy that? And so on. 

It's a fast-paced story with lightness and warmth, despite the serious issues of class, drug use, domestic violence and more. There are some really touching moments, some well-developed emotional connections, and bad decisions by both characters actually have consequences. There is no fairy tale ending but there is optimism and hope nonetheless. 

I found this book uplifting and engaging, and I really loved it. Highly recommend to teens who are searching for their artistic path or who are really into the Maker scene, especially those who love Project Runway and similar things. Susan Juby is an honest and empathetic writer whose portrayals of the two unusual teens in this novel are complex and replete with understanding. It really hit all the readerly high spots for me.


(this review first appeared at The Indextrious Reader, in slightly different form)

Text Talk: The Coat Route

The Coat Route: Craft, Luxury, & Obsession on the Trail of a $50,000 Coat  / Meg Lukens Noonan.
New York: Spiegel & Grau, c2013.
244 p.

I picked up this book on a sale table one day, recalling that I'd seen it mentioned by -- I think it was  DovegreyReader & that it had sounded interesting. So glad I did - it kept me busy for a few enjoyable evenings!

The idea for this book came to the author when she heard of an Australian tailor who had handcrafted what seemed to her an incredibly expensive overcoat for a private client.

She looked into it, and was intrigued by the whole process. So she followed the route it took from raw materials to finished coat, interviewing vicuna fur suppliers in Peru, investigating Italian silk merchants, visiting British button factories & Savile Row, and much more -- including of course, long talks with John Cutler, the master tailor. And a final visit to the coat's purchaser, a Vancouver based businessman, in which she finds the infamous overcoat casually slung across the back of a chair.

It feels like an entire collection of microhistories. It is perfect to read chapter by chapter, as each one is a complete story in its own right -- I feel like following up on one or two of my favourite bits, as they are just an introduction to a fascinating topic. I think that some of these chapters could be expanded into full books on their own! I really enjoyed dipping into this one, and after reading about the vicuna cloth, the silk lining, the gold engraved tags, the horn buttons and all the tailoring itself, the cost of this coat seems quite understandable. It is valued according to its actual value; and seems in line with couture and designer clothing prices, even while being utterly customized to the buyer.

So while something like this would never be found hanging in my closet, I found the steps toward its creation wonderfully interesting. I'd recommend reading this book bit by bit and allowing some time in between chapters, as it can feel a bit too much of a good thing when read all in one go, like I did. Her writing voice is very much "reportage", like the journalist that she is, without many stylistic frills to smooth out the narrative. It works, but for myself, a break in the matter-of-fact telling was needed. I wanted to imagine the story developing as it progressed, and taking a day or two before reading the next chapter was perfect.

Any reader who is also a sewist would find this one intriguing - so many different industries involved in making up this one item, and all of great interest to those who stitch. Recommended!



The author presents a lecture on this book at the Portland Art Museum in celebration of their 2015 exhibit: "Italian Style: Fashion Since 1945"

Text Talk Two

I've been quite busily working on some Christmas projects (and slipping one little one in for me) over the last while, besides coming down with a nasty cold that has made me a little too tired to take on any big projects in the evenings. So no new sewing projects to share at the moment, though I'll be sharing a couple of little things later this week.


But what I have been doing is reading: that is pretty much a standard for me, and in recent evenings when I've felt it necessary to get into bed early on, some fascinating books have kept me company. I'm very intrigued by the intersection of textile craft (particularly embroidery) and activism, and have been reading through two collections on the topic.

The first, Craftivism: the art of craft and activism, by Betsy Greer, is kind of the start of this genre. Greer apparently is the source of the term, and in this book she highlights many different groups of crafty people who use their craft to social ends. Some are knitters, crocheters, embroiderers, even quilters or mosaic artists. Each has a small essay and some photos of their work, as well as links as to where to find out more. I did find though, that many of the contributors are ephemeral, in the sense that their websites are out of date already, and no longer available. The book is still inspiring, though, and it is lots of fun to ponder other people's clever ideas.

The book also highlights another organization with a wonderful and active website, the Craftivist Collective out of the UK, which has ongoing projects that anyone worldwide can join in on. It's worth a look. The founder, Sarah Corbett, has written a small guide to craftivism, but unfortunately I can not seem to find an available copy here in Canada. Perhaps I'll eventually resort to the Book Depository, once the Canadian dollar isn't at such an abysmal exchange rate ;)

The second read is focused more closely on embroidery. It's called Hoopla: the art of unexpected embroidery, by Leanne Prain, a Canadian writer who has also written books on yarn bombing and storytelling via textiles.  It's a huge, heavy book full of photos and essays - much the same format as Greer's book, but longer. It has a variety of craftivists, some which appealed to my aesthetic and some which really didn't.  But again, it is interesting to see the variety of craft enthusiasts who are using their chosen method to create something unique. This book is not entirely focused on craftivism, rather, it opens up into crafters who are just choosing to pursue their craft as a kind of lifestyle statement as well. Plus a few textile artists who exhibit professionally. It's an intriguing blend, and made me think about what I want to get out of my own sewing and embroidery practice.

I ordered both of these books through my library system to check them out. I usually do this with craft books, in order to see what I need to own for myself. I don't think I'd need either of these in my permanent collection, but they were both very worth reading, and I'm very thankful for my library system's robust interlibrary loan abilities.

And now to the one book that started me off on this craft reading jaunt -- a classic book in this field, which I've owned for years and years -- though I ended up reading the newest edition from 2010. It's Rozsika Parker's The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery & the making of the feminine. It was a great read.

Parker is extremely knowledgeable and a very good writer; the history she shares is very readable, not dully academic. This is a chronological approach, dealing with embroidery from the time of the Bayeux Tapestry up until the 70s (when it was first published). The new edition also has some mention of more current embroidery artists, but just a mention. It's also primarily looking at English history.

Things I found most interesting were the way that embroidery came to be both tied to the feminine in an oppressive manner, while also allowing a space for the subversion of the title. Originally embroidery was not differentiated from the fine arts; it was only in the Renaissance when art and craft began to split that embroidery turned into a feminine, amateur craft. Parker draws the connections between the ways that patriarchal society used embroidery as a way to  define "the feminine", in many different eras.

I was particularly taken with the war of words in the 1600's between men who thought that needlework was beneficial because it kept women silent and still, and the women who replied to them by writing their own public tracts in response, mocking the author. Throughout the book, Parker shares both how women were oppressed by needlecraft, and how they spoke up using the same metier. I was really inspired by this one to follow up with our current resurgence of handicraft and activism. Parker's book is a fascinating, feminist history of this art form, and is a must read in this area.

After I'd read it, I also discovered this amazing podcast series from a conference at Goldsmith University in the UK: The Subversive Stitch Revisited: The Politics of Cloth.  I've been listening to many of these lectures while sewing and embroidering, and enjoying them in their varied subject areas.

Lots of learning going on around here lately. Do you have any must-reads to recommend?

Text Talk

Since my big sewing blowout in July, I haven't been doing a lot of actual sewing. I've bought fabric, and cut lots of patterns out in preparation, I've been taking some online classes, I've even bought and prepped some new patterns. But the sitting down and sewing hasn't been happening enough. This time of year, though, is a really busy time for my other passion -- books.

Fall brings a huge list of new releases that I have to read. Yes, have to. For my job (librarian) and various committees I belong to, I have a reading list that I must get to. And of course, there is all that pleasure reading to squeeze in as well! 

Here are a few great titles that have come my way in the past while, things I've read and things I want to read.

First off, there is a new release, a book of essays called Women in Clothes. How could I NOT want to read this one immediately? The publisher synopsis states that "Women in Clothes explores the wide range of motives that inform how women present themselves through clothes, and what style really means." To make it even more irresistible, their website is amazing. You can read the surveys that this book is based on, and you can even fill out the survey yourself. Even if you don't want to take the time to fill out all 83 questions, do look at it -- there are many thought-provoking questions about our style, clothing preferences, and the deeper meaning behind it all.


I've also just picked up a copy of Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style and read through it. Gunn is well known as a fashion leader, and his advice is very specific -- know your style, dress appropriately, don't make the fashion faux pas that he makes clear in his text. It's a bit of a fluff read, especially the chapter of fashion mentors (find your style maven and follow her example -- all the usual suspects -- Marilyn, the Hepburns, etc.) But it was still entertaining, and I certainly share his horror at people wearing pyjama pants in public. 

This book actually reminded me of another book from 1938, Margaretta Byers' Designing Women, all about how to dress your age elegantly and affordably.


There are many fashion/design books on my radar lately. I've also just finished Diana Vreeland's "D.V." -- while she is fascinating and of course full of crazy stories, I was exhausted just reading this book -- I can't imagine spending time in her actual presence! She's been described as eccentric and imperious. And I can see why after reading this one...

But I've also been reading and reviewing a few others books that may be of interest to sewing readers, over at my regular book blog. I've just read a very interesting Canadian memoir called Measure of a Man, by JJ Lee (my review here) -- it's a blend of personal and professional, as Lee talks about suits and the memory of his own father. Really an excellent read; I hope you'll check out the original review for more of my thoughts on it, plus some links to some of the neat stuff that JJ Lee does besides writing memoirs (including a radio show about our clothing choices). 

And one last mention of a book I read a while back and really enjoyed -- I think I might have mentioned it here before -- I've seen it making the rounds of a few of the sewing blogs, but wanted to throw my recommendation in as well -- Linda Przybyszewski's The Lost Art of Dress. (my review here) It was informative, entertaining, thoughtful, and full of great notes that led me to other reading (like "Designing Women" above). Definitely worth a look, so do try to get your hands on this one if you can.

That's it for this round of Text Talk. I'm sure I'm have more to share fairly soon. It's not like I ever stop reading ;)