Literary Sewing Circle: Author Feature!

 

Today's the day to talk about the author of our pick for this round of the #LiterarySewingCircle! L.M. Montgomery is a classic Canadian author and is very well known indeed! 

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in New London on Prince Edward Island, Canada, on November 30, 1874. She is best known for a collection of novels, essays, short stories, and poetry beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success & established her career.  She published 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems, and 30 essays. Most of the novels were set on Prince Edward Island (except for our Blue Castle!) and those locations within Canada's smallest province became a literary landmark and popular tourist site. She lived on PEI until she married, when she moved to Ontario, but always wrote about the PEI she knew.

(mostly via Wikipedia)

But what many readers might not know about her is that she was also very interested in the domestic arts. She loved cooking, and was also an accomplished needlewoman. In 1903, before she was a published fiction writer, she contributed a pattern for a Netted Doily to the Modern Priscilla, a popular periodical at the time which included articles about craft, cooking and domesticity - and also some fiction in later issues. You can see some of that in a copy of The Shining Scroll, a newsletter sent out by the LM Montgomery Literary Society (this article was written by Christy Woster).

 I don't think the scan is clear enough to make the exact pattern, unfortunately but maybe you can find The Modern Priscilla is an archive near you ;) 

There is also heavy use of needlework as a way to illuminate characters and personalities in most of Montgomery's books. And who can forget Anne Shirley's gift of a dress with puffed sleeves? There is an interesting article called The Symbolism of Needlework and Textile Arts in the Anne series in the Shining Scroll newsletter, written by Pamela Hancock. (note it starts on p. 24 of the issue) While Anne never really takes to patchwork (and neither does Valancy for that matter...) there are other needlearts that they both find more to their taste, ie: Valancy's hooked cushions that she asks her mother if she can take to her new home.

There is also a master's thesis about clothing in LM Montgomery's work, which includes The Blue Castle as one of the books studied. Changing Clothes: Female Dress and the Widening Sphere in 

the Fiction of L.M. Montgomery by Sabrina Mark can be found online, if you are interested in reading more about this fascinating topic!

We can see from our own reading that Valancy's clothing changes her from a dowdy spinster to someone with bewitching eyes, who looks like a sparkling young woman, when Uncle Benjamin spots her in town, to his chagrin. 

Montgomery was also fond of nice clothing herself, something that she mentions in her journals and also included in her scrapbooks. She kept two colourful scrapbooks for quite a few years when she was young, between the years of 1893 and 1911. The Blue Scrapbook and the Red Scrapbook were collected into a volume called "Imagining Anne", where you can look at the bright fashion images and clippings that Montgomery had put together over those years. Part of these scrapbooks were images of beautifully dressed women from periodicals of the day. And there are a couple of pages where she attached circles of fabrics she had used for making her own clothing - I would love to see the originals! 

Montgomery discussed what she would wear to various events, in her journals, and paid attention to her outfits. She was happy to have money of her own to spend on lovely clothes once she started supporting herself. And her descriptions of beautiful clothing, or useful clothing, or the strange outfits on some of her eccentric characters, really flesh out her characters and their status in their communities. 

She also had strong feelings about other domestic arts -- she was house proud and liked to keep a clean and well appointed home. She noted that having their own house once Ewan retired and they were no longer living in a church-owned manse was a satisfying thing for her. And she was a noted cook. She enjoyed and was good at cooking, with recognized signature recipes. There was a cookbook put out in 1996, collecting her recipes, called Aunt Maud's Recipe Book. This was based on Montgomery's own ledger of go-to recipes that had been passed down to her descendants. It's well worth searching it out if you can - there are some interesting recipes and menu suggestions. It's a fun read! 

Because LM Montgomery is such a classic writer, there are lots of places to find out more about her! You can check out the following sites: 

LM Montgomery Institute

LM Montgomery Online

LM Montgomery at Dalhousie University

LM Montgomery at the University of Guelph

LM Montgomery at Toronto Metropolitan University 

Journal of LM Montgomery Studies 

Canadian Heritage Minutes 

Historic Places PEI

LMM Birthplace 

Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario

Canadian Museum of History: LMM and the Post

And always remember, as Anne Shirley once said: 

“It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.”

 

Literary Sewing Circle: Author Feature!

 

This week we have a special feature: an interview with the author. Theresa Kishkan is both a writer and a sewist, and has shared some of both of those worlds with us. Read on for more!

photo credit Alexandra Bolduc 

1. Welcome, Theresa, and thank you for taking the time to do this interview for the Literary Sewing Circle! Can you tell us a bit about how you came to write Sisters of Grass? What was the genesis of this story?

It’s a pleasure to answer these questions, Melanie. When my children were young, we camped in the Nicola Valley every summer and explored it widely. It interested me in so many ways. The Indigenous and settler histories are entwined, the ecosystem is very lovely, and its social context seemed almost like a microcosm of so much of what our society was grappling with: land use and values, reconciling histories, and so on. I remember driving up onto the Douglas Plateau one October with a picnic and feeling the extraordinary sense of the present and past existing in a series of layers. A truck filled with fly-fishers on their way to the old lodge on Pennask Lake passed us, dust rising from the truck’s wheels while an Indigenous man repaired fences. As I was thinking this, a little herd of horses, turned out after the cattle had all been brought down to their winter quarters, approached us and one of them, a bay mare, came right up to me as though we’d known each other all our lives. The moment shimmered (I can only describe it that way). And in my attempt to write a poem about it, because in those years, I was a poet, I realized I’d need more time, more space (both imaginative and actual; I needed pages...) to write about where the encounter with the lovely horse was taking me. I hadn’t written a novel before and learned as I went along how to shape the narrative, organize elements of plot and so on, but I felt I was so deeply immersed in the place itself that I really just needed to pay attention. I wanted to know what it might have been like to grow up in that area at a time before my own and writing my way into the story was the best way to do this.

2. There is a theme of material history through textiles in this book, as Anna, our modern-day curator, imagines the life of Margaret Stuart a century before. Was museum work something you had training in yourself, or was this interest due to your own experiences with textiles?

I have no training in either museum work or in the conservation of textiles but I’ve always been drawn to women’s textile work and how it is often a way of encoding and preserving history. (I hadn’t yet read Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s Women’s Work: The First 20000 Years but when I did find that book, I realized I was on the right path.) We spent time in the Four Corners area of the US when my husband was a visiting poet at a university there and we visited lots of Indigenous museums with displays of sandals woven of yucca fibre, beadwork, medicine bags beautifully decorated with quills, as well as community museums with the exhibits of a settler past; I loved the samplers, the quilts, the clothing, and the homely objects such as tea towels, often embellished, and tablecloths, etc. I realized that such work is almost subversive, practical and necessary, but also so satisfying to create, communally or individually. It’s a way of passing along knowledge and information.

My daughter, a child when I wrote Sisters of Grass, is a collections manager in a large museum, a position she arrived at circuitously. She was a graduate student in classical studies and worked part-time at a heritage site that had been damaged in a fire. She learned conservation skills and eventually took courses in museum studies and arrived at her current job that way. In many ways she has my alternate life, living in the city where I was raised, working at a museum I’ve always known, and when I visit her, I love spending time in the collections, looking at fragments of early baskets, textiles, and other evidence of women’s work as part of our foundational history.   

I did work for a few hours a week in the Special Collections department at the University of Victoria’s main library when I was an undergraduate student and I remember how exciting it was when a box of materials came from one of the writers whose papers the department collected – Robert Graves, John Betjeman, a few others. These weren’t textiles of course but the materials were eclectic – everything from drafts of poems to shopping lists and correspondence – and often I’d be asked to do a preliminary sorting. I know that Anna would have felt a similar excitement as she gathered materials for her exhibit and I took the opportunity to embed some objects owned by myself or friends into her curatorial findings.

3. The setting of the Nicola Valley is a character in itself in this book. I feel like all your earlier poetry and essays come through in its really beautiful evocation. Do you have any strong feelings about place in forming a person's identity?

I do think we are profoundly shaped by place in ways we understand and also in mysterious ways. I wrote Sisters of Grass in some respects to imagine what it would have been like to have been born in that landscape, in that intersection of history and culture, to have attended services in the Murray Church in the little town of Nicola itself, to have walked through its tiny graveyard and read the names of the dead on the weathered stones and wooden crosses, names that still echo in the valley: the Coutlees, the Lauders, the Guichons. In the most self-serving of ways, writing the novel was an excuse for me to go regularly to the Nicola Valley to visit the archives or to ride in the hills or simply sit on the shores of Nicola Lake with the remnants of kikuli houses around me and dream my way back.

4. Margaret's mother is Indigenous and Margaret has a strong relationship with her grandmother, learning traditional skills based in the landscape. Her character reveals two strands of life in the Valley. Why was it important to you to show both in this particular way?

From my first visit to the Nicola Valley, I began to understand that the Indigenous and settler histories are entwined. The Indigenous history is much older; though the settler history is the one you see as you enter the valley, passing old worn barns, cabins, the gracious hotel at Quilchena, built in anticipation of a railway that was never built. You pass through the Spahomin reserve enroute to the Douglas Lake Ranch, the Lower Nicola reserve if you drive from Spences Bridge to Merritt along a highway that has since been mostly washed away from the atmospheric river weather event of 2021. Higher on hills above the Coldwater River, the Coldwater band has had a village site for thousands of years. In the archival record, Indigenous and settler names show up on school lists, results of horse races, accounts of cattle drives, marriages, and so on. Reading between the lines in books such as Jean Barman’s Sojourning Sisters: The Lives and Letters of Jessie and Annie McQueen reveals a really complex social history in the valley. It was possible to be a cowboy at one of the ranches and also to participate in sacred ceremonies. Chief John Chilihitsa was a prominent Indigenous horse breeder whose animals were sought-after for cavalry and infantry during WW1.Many families married back and forth into both cultures, were both cultures.

Margaret’s life was held in this balance and for me it was a way to honour two strands of valley history as well as to learn more myself about the Indigenous presence and culture(s).

5. Art in many forms is vital to this story, from Grandmother Jackson's baskets, to Emma Albani's singing, to Margaret's own photography. What role does this instinct for art and creativity play in women's lives, both in your fiction and more widely, in your opinion?

I think in a class-conscious society, the women who were encouraged to participate in the arts were often those with money and privilege. But for others, they found ways to make the practical things they did daily, of necessity, a way to explore creativity. Margaret sort of straddled two cultures and had opportunities that were perhaps not available to others. But I imagine other young women in her community – the Indigenous ones as well as the settlers – finding ways to do what they could. The Interior Salish baskets are often works of art – their forms, their imbrication. Yet they were made to be used, beauty yoked to function. Like quilts. An aside: I once went to a quilt show at Kilkenny Castle in Ireland, featuring 19th century quilts. Most of them were made by Anglo-Irish women from the upper class. The quilts were gorgeous – stars and elaborate designs made with silks, velvets, and taffetas. But I lost my heart to a rough well-used log-cabin patchwork made of scraps of sugar sacks, ticking, and what seemed to be pyjama fabric. Each square was lop-sided and the piecework was clumsy but I thought how much pleasure the quilt’s maker had probably taken in her work. That maybe she’d even been a servant in a house with beautiful quilts and she was inspired to try one of her own. In a way it was a subversive act. No one can fault you for sewing and piecing if you’re using scraps and rags and if the project has practical intent. She might have known that it would have lasting plain beauty as well.

My older son worked for a few years at the History Museum in Gatineau (he’s a historian and was hired to develop exhibits for the 150th anniversary of Confederation) and when we visited while he was there, he arranged for me to have a tour of the textiles collection. What an amazing wealth of (mostly) women’s work! Hooked rugs, Red Cross quilts created for displaced people in WW2, clothing, flags and banners, the most beautiful and astonishing material archive. I think I draw on that tour and subsequent visits to the curatorial wing of the Museum in more ways than I know.

In my writing, I sometimes let my characters do things I can’t even begin to do myself. They’re painters sometimes (Winter Wren and my work-in-progress) or singers (one character in The Age of Water Lilies) or curators (Anna in Sisters of Grass). It’s a chance to live vicariously...

     

5. As someone who is involved in sewing and needlework yourself, do you see a connection between the making involved in textiles and in writing? Do they inform one another for you? If so, how?

I’ve always said (and I believe it’s true for me) that I don’t see a hierarchy in my own creative pursuits, that they feel like part of living an integrated life. Sewing, writing, gardening, simple book designing (I run a small micro-press with a publishing partner, Anik See, showcasing literary novellas) – they are all very satisfying. I’m better at some of these things than others but I still find myself drawn to one or another for reasons I don’t always understand. Sometimes when I’m stuck with something in a writing project, I pick up a quilt; I’ll often find that the meditative work of sewing allows me to untangle issues in my writing.

Recently someone asked me when I began to write seriously and I guess I was in my early 20s but as far back as I can remember, I felt compelled to write things down. I’d feel such an urgency to make stories of things I loved and wanted to remember, though I’d often not complete them because I didn’t have the vocabulary I knew even then I needed to make the thing true. Didn’t know to progress beyond the initial description. And I also felt a similar urgency to make things with my hands, out of wood or fabric, even though I came from a family without any interest in such things, so there wasn’t much encouragement. It wasn’t until much later that I saw how I could put that urgency and interest to good use and with the guidance of a couple of really good teachers, in high school and at university, I learned to take myself and this work more seriously.

6. I know that like the readers in the Literary Sewing Circle, you are also a sewist and stitcher, with a wide range of interests. What are some of your favourite creations, and where can people find out more about your creative pursuits?

I’ve always sewn in a practical way – curtains, mending, basic clothing (though I wasn’t very good at that; too careless...). I began quilting about 35 years ago after sorting some fabric and suddenly seeing harmonies in several of the pieces. I cut out squares in a sort of heat of inspiration, though most of them were a bit lopsided, and sewed them together in courses, figuring things out as I went along. I can’t say the result was beautiful, though one of my sons requested that I leave it to him in my will—my response was to make a few simple repairs and give it to him then-- but I learned so much and it ignited a passion which has endured to this day. I love the process even more than the finished result. I have a big wicker rocking chair in the kitchen by our woodstove and I keep a quilting basket near so that any time I have a little time, I sit and quilt. It’s very meditative for me—the feeling of the fabric under my hands, the way quilting itself creates texture. I almost always have two quilts in progress at once so that I can switch to keep things interesting.

 About 20 years ago I began to do some indigo dye work too, trying out various shibori techniques and discovered the extraordinary Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada’s book on shibori: “When the cloth is returned to its two-dimensional form, the design that emerges is the result of the three-dimensional shape, the type of resist, and the amount of pressure exerted by the thread or clamp that secured the piece during the cloth’s exposure to the dye. The cloth sensitively records both the shape and the pressure; it is the “memory” of the shape that remains imprinted in the cloth. This is the essence of shibori.” I think quilting in general and the craft of shibori specifically is about memory, how we imagine our work before and as we do it, how design can be a metaphor for containing unruly thinking, how our lives are somehow embedded in what we do. My quilts are often a way of figuring out a difficult issue or a solace during times of sorrow or a means to explore colour, texture, and the nature of love. They extend my interests in geography and mapping, in salmon cycles, working out representative geometry for house-building, and I’m always thinking of ways to add something new to the process.

I’ve written about quilting and indigo dye work, most recently in Blue Portugal & Other Essays, published in the spring of 2022 by the University of Alberta Press. There are essays about quilting in earlier books too – Phantom Limb, Red Laredo Boots, and Euclid’s Orchard. The title essay in Euclid’s Orchard is about the creation and abandonment of an orchard, mathematics, coyote song, and quilting as a way to communicate with my younger son whose personal trajectory took him far from home. (I made him a quilt based on the essay and describe the making of it in the piece.) My novella Patrin is in part about a quilt that is also a map, a map of a family’s history. I also write about quilting from time to time on my blog.

7. Are you working on anything else that you'd like to share right now?

I have a long essay forthcoming in Sharp Notions: Essays on the Stitching Life about working on quilts as I helped my husband recover from bilateral hip replacement surgery in 2020. During his surgery, which was successful, he sustained a compression injury to his sciatic-peroneal nerve which resulted in a paralyzed foot. It was a difficult time for both of us; it was during the first year of the pandemic; we were advised to consider him immunocompromised, so we couldn’t ask others for help, apart from health professionals; and while he healed, I sewed, and we both worked together on his therapy. There were many correlations between the seams I was making and the (partial) regeneration of his peroneal nerve. The story has a mostly happy ending in that he’s made a pretty good recovery, has about 80% use of the damaged foot, and we learned things about ourselves and our capacity for figuring out how to face difficult things. I’m also working on a novel set in a small fishing village, based on my own community, and there are quilters in it, knitters, and an artist who uses both paint and textiles to bring her dreams to life.

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Thank you for sharing some of your writing and sewing journeys with us, Theresa! It all sounds so thoughtful, and I can't wait to read your upcoming work. We hope you'll enjoy seeing the projects we make inspired by your writing. 

You can find out more about Theresa here: 

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Literary Sewing Circle: Author Feature!

 

This week we have a special feature: an interview with the author! Elizabeth C. Bunce is both a writer and a sewist, and has shared some of both of those worlds with us. Read on for more!

1. Welcome, Elizabeth, and thank you for taking the time to do this interview for the Literary Sewing Circle! Can you tell us a bit about how you came to write Premeditated Myrtle? What was the genesis of this character and her delightful story?

I am so happy to be here! Thank you for the generous invitation! Premeditated Myrtle is the product of an early morning Freudian slip. Several years ago my husband and I were dragging our groggy selves through our morning routine, attempting to carry on a cogent conversation while woefully precaffeinated. One of us, remarking on something on the news, tried to say “premeditated murder,” and it came out “premeditated myrtle.” I looked at my husband and said, “That is a middle grade mystery!” 

2. Myrtle is such a clever, intellectual character, but she's also a believably young girl with emotional issues to face in her life. How did you find that balance, which makes her so relatable and sympathetic?

Well, confession time: Myrtle is me, when I was in eighth grade and my home room teacher told my parents I was antisocial and argumentative. I remember being a clever twelve-year-old, fascinated by things that my peers couldn’t relate to, and yet surrounded by supportive adults (Mr. Lippe notwithstanding) who nurtured my interests, encouraged my intellectual pursuits, and gave me room to be myself—argumentative and all.

Writing Myrtle therefore comes pretty naturally! But I’ve also realized that Myrtle is at her best and most entertaining as a character when she is pushed to the absolute edge. She may see herself as a totally rational professional, but she’s also twelve, and being twelve and clever in a world that is not quite prepared for you is a recipe for some moments of… passion, shall we say? One of my favorite scenes in Premeditated Myrtle is when Miss Judson tells Myrtle she sounds hysterical and ridiculous, to which she stomps her foot and cries, “I am NEVER hysterical!” Of course not, Myrtle. Sorry we suggested it…

3. There are so many great female characters in this book - Myrtle herself, of course, but others like Miss Judson. She's a complex and intriguing person. Did her relationship to Myrtle come to you immediately when you first conceived of this story, or was it something that developed as you wrote?

Interestingly, the book really started to come alive for me when I focused on writing Miss Judson. I had been doing character and scene sketches with Myrtle, Peony, the neighborhood… but the important pieces of the world didn’t click together until Miss Judson’s efficient boots first telegraph-tapped into the schoolroom, in what became the very first scene of the book. As soon as she was on the page, I knew her. But, of course, she has a fascinating and complex background—she’s an immigrant and a woman of color in Victorian England, a world with a very narrow definition of British Womanhood. Having been thrust forcibly into that world as a young girl—Black and French in an English boarding school—and expected to become as British as possible as fast as possible, I think she has a unique perspective on how to help Myrtle navigate the challenges of becoming a Young Lady of Quality while still learning how to be true to herself. 

It’s been such fun exploring even more aspects of her personality as the series goes on. As Myrtle herself says, “Miss Judson is a deep well”—she’s constantly surprising me. I’ve just turned in the first draft of Book 5, Myrtle, Means, and Opportunity, which revolves around a surprising change in Miss Judson’s fortunes, and it's been a great chance to really explore the evolution of the relationship between my two (human) heroines. 

One thing readers might not have noticed is that Miss Judson gets the first line in every book. (“Correct me if I’m wrong,” being her opening in Premeditated Myrtle.) When I begin a new book, it’s that first comment of Miss Judson’s that sets the tone for the whole story.

4. What was your inspiration for the precocious Peony? Are you a cat lover yourself? And if so, do you have a "cattern weight" who helps you with your sewing?

I am a cat lover—a cat adorer—a cat worshipper! I am a Friend to All Cats! I always thought of myself as a Confirmed Dog Person—so much so that I wound up sharing my home with a retired racing greyhound and ten unemployed coonhounds. I mean, that’s some serious Dog Devotion right there! As they grew older and needed more fulltime care, I took time away from writing to focus on them. In the summer of 2016 a little stray cat showed up on our doorstep (actually our garage), and gradually insinuated herself into our lives until, over the course of the next year, she became a permanent member of our family. When she meowed, she really did sound like she was saying “No!” …And she said it a lot. At the time we first met her, I was just starting to play around with the notion of a new story, and a friend reminded me that mystery lovers love cats (or maybe it was cat lovers love mysteries?). She suggested I write a mystery about the opinionated little feline. Peony was the perfect fit for that back-burner idea I had, the middle grade mystery called Premeditated Myrtle…

My cat Quincy—always called Boo—is my biggest sewing fan. Ever. He tests all new fabrics for coziness, monitors my progress, and peforms quality control tests on every project. He also likes to photobomb awards ceremonies.  

5. I find that this book works perfectly for both middle grade and adult readers; personally I especially enjoyed the footnotes. But I can imagine it takes some work to get the tone just right. Is it difficult to write something aimed at the middle grade audience which is also an entertaining read for adults?

No. 😊  Well, at least I don’t find it so, in these books. I had a very specific audience of young readers in mind when I began Premeditated Myrtle: kids who “read up,” or whose reading level is above their age and grade level. My first several books were for young adults (teens), but most of my fan mail was coming from younger readers—fifth and sixth graders. They were responding to my dense prose, the historical settings, the darker themes… did I mention the dense prose? I realized I needed to write a book especially for those kids. And that meant not changing anything about the way that I wrote: with respect for the intelligence of my audience, and with trust that they will follow—and enjoy!—a story even if they don’t know every single word on the page. Myrtle certainly didn’t disappoint me as a narrator: she uses some words even I have to look up! (She knows four languages, after all, and I have… one.)

One of the first fan letters I got after Premeditated Myrtle came from an eleven-year-old who told me she studied Latin and forensics and had no idea that there were books about murder written for her! Smart kids like Myrtle often find themselves reaching for—or being handed—adult books. Such kids who are mystery fans very often find their way to Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie and fall in love with the genre. But as wonderful as those stories are, they’re not about kids. They don’t have young heroes solving the crimes. And that’s what I wanted to give my younger fans: all the complexity of an adult novel, but starring somebody like them. 

6. I know that you are also a sewist and maker with a wide range of interests. What are some of your favourite creations, and where can people find out more about your creative pursuits?

You’re asking me to pick a favorite project? That’s like trying to pick a favorite cat—or book! I’m a lifelong needlewoman (I had my first embroidery project handed to me when I was five), and an internet-taught seamstress who learned to sew as an adult. My first love was historical costuming, and I learned to sew making Renaissance Fair costumes for my whole family. (If you come to visit during Fair season, you get a costume. Full stop.) Along the way I started making costumes related to my books (I made an 18th century ensemble all in wool for my first book, A Curse Dark as Gold, which takes place in a woolen mill.) With the Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries, though, I am quite a few years (cough, decades) removed from the age of my protagonist, and the schedule of a book a year hasn’t left a lot of time for my own costuming endeavors. I have since discovered a delightful new outlet for my historical costuming: I now make them in miniature, modeled by 18” dolls. I have been developing a girl’s 1890s wardrobe based on period fashion plates—and I’ve gotta tell you: this is the most fun you can possibly have with a needle and thread. The second-most-fun is quilting, although these days I do more garment sewing than anything—my everyday work clothes are disgracefully casual, but I enjoy dressing up for author events, and this spring I got to make a couple of Very Posh Frocks for awards ceremonies (Cold-Blooded Myrtle, Myrtle Hardcastle #3, was nominated for the Edgar and Agatha Awards). Since Myrtle debuted during the pandemic, these were my first events for which I need something presentable on my lower half! 

I try to share my projects on social media. I blog at my website, www.elizabethcbunce.com where there is also a page devoted to Making. You can find all my social media handles/links there, too. And, of course, I participate in the message boards and post reviews at the sewing website PatternReview.com, where I go by the handle “stirwatersblue” (a reference to my first book, and at the time the only username I could come up with that hadn’t already been taken!) There is now a lively contigent of fellow seamstresses who know me primarily as “Stirs!” 

7. Are you working on anything else that you'd like to share right now?

Having just turned in the latest Myrtle book, I am now officially On Holiday! But I have an incredibly exciting event coming up next month. The Kansas City Public Library, Westport Historical Society, and the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures Museum have teamed up for World Doll Day 2022 to celebrate this year’s theme, Dolls & Books. To that end, they are creating a Myrtle Hardcastle doll! They had no idea I was a doll costumer when this idea was conceived, and I am beyond excited by their project. We’re doing a presentation at the festival, for which my vintage 1993 Battat 18” model will be getting a new frock, Myrtle’s outfit from the cover of In Myrtle Peril (Myrtle Hardcastle #4), which comes out October 6. The dress is based on a period fashion plate I sent to Brett Helquist, the cover artist for the Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries. I have been gathering all the materials for this project for the past couple of months, and now at last I have time to start sewing! Kaufman fine-wale corduroy in “amethyst,” some deep purple microsuede, pleated organza… It’s going to be very fun! 

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Thank you for sharing some of your writing and sewing journeys with us, Elizabeth! We hope you'll enjoy seeing the projects we make inspired by your writing. 

You can find out more about Elizabeth here: 

Website 

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Literary Sewing Circle: Author Feature

Today's the day to talk about the author of our pick for this round of the #LiterarySewingCircle! Susanna Kearsley is an accomplished author of  13 novels; she's won a number of awards for her writing, including the 1993 Catherine Cookson Award for Mariana, a novel that is still very popular among her readers! In 2014, she received Romance Writers of America's RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance for The Firebird -- and many other reader's choice awards along the way, too.

Susanna is well known for her romantic stories that usually focus two timelines and some kind of connection between them, whether that is family history, psychological ties, or paranormal elements. And there is always a happy ever after. 

On her blog, she calls her work "women-in-jeopardy" novels, or, as I know them, Modern Gothics. I really love this genre, and so am thrilled to be able to share a bit about one of my favourite authors of this type of book. 

photo by Jacques du Toit

You can listen to a 2016 podcast over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books in which Susanna and her host talk a fair bit about Bellewether. Some of the aspects of the plot and Kearsley's general interests over all her writing are explored. It's quite fascinating!

If you are interested in historical fiction as a whole, there is a free Zoom webinar on historical fiction featuring Susanna Kearsley as one of the panelists, hosted by her publisher Sourcebooks, next Tuesday April 7. Check it out! 

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Susanna started out as a museum curator, and says that she has worked with textiles in that field. Here are a couple of things she has said about clothing and the past.

This familiarity with the importance of clothing in historical settings shows in the careful descriptions of clothing in her books. A couple of examples --

In The Firebird:

For one thing she was plainly dressed, but dressed with so much care I knew she’d taken pains to look her best. And although I was usually quite good at guessing ages, I had trouble guessing hers. She had to be at least a decade older than myself, so nearing forty at the least, but while her clothing and the way she held herself suggested she might be still older...

In A Desperate Fortune:

It was not her mother's face that she remembered, but the feel of her -- the soft warmth of her arms, the firmer softness of her silken bodice over stays, the ever-present tickle of the ruffled lace that edged her white chemise and brushed on Mary's cheek and upturned nose when she was snuggling on her mother's lap.


And of course, in Bellewether, we see Lydia in her yellow gown, and the wonderful uniforms of the two French officers. Charley herself speaks about working with textiles in her museum work, and knowing that the details of museum life are based in the author's own experience makes them richer and more reliable.


To find out more about Susanna Kearsley, check her out online.

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Literary Sewing Circle: Author Feature

photo by Latrippi  via Flickr

Today we'll be looking at the author of our current Literary Sewing Circle pick. Ruth Ozeki is a multi-talented author, film-maker, and Zen Buddhist priest.

 She's also a part time university instructor. As shared on her academic bio for Smith College:

Ruth Ozeki is an award-winning author, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest whose novels have garnered international critical acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, environmental politics, philosophy and global pop culture into unique hybrid narrative forms. Her best-selling novel A Tale for the Time Being (2013) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; it has been translated and published in more than 35 countries. Her earlier novels, My Year of Meats (1998) and All Over Creation (2003), were both New York Times Notable Books.

Her earlier novels -- My Year of Meats and All Over Creation -- are both concerned with the environment, with identity, with community, just like this latest novel. My Year of Meats was my first introduction to her writing, and I really loved it. So I'm happy to share this latest novel with you, too. 

Interviews:

Ruth Ozeki on books in life and in her fiction

Ruth Ozeki talking about author interviews and A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth talks about libraries with the Public Library Association in the US

And there is a wonderfully thought-provoking talk that you can listen to that Ruth Ozeki gave as part of her work at Smith College, all about the connections between Buddhism and autobiographical writing. It's nearly an hour & a half, so get a cup of tea ready and settle in!





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Now, there is something else about this author that I think we sewists might be particularly interested in. Ozeki is not only a writer, filmmaker and intellectual, she's also an ordained Buddhist priest. As part of that process, she was required to sew her ordination robes herself,  by hand. She talks a bit about this in this article:

Confessions of a Zen Novelist

In this article, she refers to sewing her Rakusu. This is a miniature version of the Buddha's robe, a bib-like piece sewn by students as they are preparing for the ceremony in which they'll receive their Bodhisavatta precepts: more on this here, including a nice clear photo of a Rakusu.

The Brooklyn Zen Centre has shared an interesting article on the sewing of the Rakusu, including a lovely quote about the importance of sewing in Buddhism from Tomoe Katagiri,  a well-known Zen Buddhist sewing teacher. And then you can read a full-length interview with Katagiri all about her life as a Buddhist sewing teacher. It is really moving; one stitch at a time, just like life, that's Zen stitching.

The next item that Ozeki sewed was her Okesa, her ordination robe. What is an Okesa exactly? You can find out here.

Once again, the Brooklyn Zen Centre has a nice set of photos of an Okesa that the students there sewed as a group for one of their priests.

If you are particularly interested in the theory behind the importance of the role of sewing in Buddhist practice, you can find a discussion in a forum which talks about the process of sewing okesa -- a comment notes that sewing is zazen, too! I think many of us could agree with that.

And you can even find an online copy of Tomoe Katagiri's book on Buddhist sewing, which covers the why and wherefores of fabric sourcing, colours to be used, designs and techniques, how and why to sew and to wear these items, and the purpose of it all. If you are really keen on finding out more about sewing as a Buddhist practice, this is a great read. But please note that these items are only to be sewn with the permission of a Zen teacher, in the steps involved in one's serious Buddhist study.

I hope that this gives you a little more to think about as we keep reading. We can continue to consider our own sewing and its place in our lives as we read.