July 2024 – The G. G. Files

I love a great detail on a garment. It could be special top-stitching, a bias-cut sleeve vent or (and this may be my favourite kind of detail) a great button or six. What I’ve noticed, though, is that many ready-to-wear pieces lack these details. Sure, you can order some great buttons from your favourite online artisan and replace them, but I think it’s even better if you can design those details yourself when you’re sewing.

Over the years, I’ve tried to make some of my pieces unique.

This year, since I’ve been spending a great deal more time writing new books than sewing, I managed only a few pieces. One of the ones I’ve been most proud of is the jean-style jacket I made for my husband recently. I found this McCall’s pattern last fall …

… and asked my husband if he’d like to choose his own fabric. So, we took a (long) walk downtown to Queen Street West here in Toronto (the fabric district) and wandered in and out of a few shops until he found what he wanted—a grey-mix twill.

I have to admit that I’ve been spending a lot of my time sewing with silks and knits in recent years, and this was by far the stiffest, thickest one I’ve encountered in a long time. But I’m nothing if not willing to take on a new sewing adventure.

I began the project by creating a muslin. There was no way I was sewing this for my husband without knowing it would fit well. So, about those details …

As you can see on the pattern, it has four patch pockets, each of which has a flap and a button. To make the details even more interesting, the pattern designer set one on its side.

I asked my husband if he liked all the pockets since it seemed to me to be quite busy. Surprisingly, he liked them, so I made up the muslin with the pockets. What we discovered (the beauty of making a test garment) was that the sideways pocket with its flap and button looked like too much. So, I removed it and put it back on at an angle with no flap and voila! We had a new detail that we all liked better. Once we had it fitted well, it was time to move on with the creation.

I started by washing my 4 X 4-inch sample. I discovered that it washed well but didn’t dry well, so I prepped the fabric by washing it and hanging it to dry. Step one done.

I started with seam finish and top-stitching samples. I also tried my walking foot (which didn’t work well) and my quarter-inch foot. In the midst of all this, I discovered that there is such a thing as a quarter-inch foot with a guide, and I was ecstatic.

I immediately ordered one, and it made for the most accurate topstitching I could imagine. I also managed perfectly matched seams (I must have been under the magic spell of the sewing godmother!).

In the end, the pockets and the buttons added just the details that made this jacket something different—something special. And, what’s even better, my husband loves it!

Happy sewing!

When I started this blog all those years ago, I thought I would muse about my opinions on all manner of subjects related to women and style—especially women of “a certain age.” Fast forward six or so years, and I have found myself writing more and more about style as it relates to sewing. I’ve even taught myself how to tailor a blazer and make a Chanel-inspired Little French Jacket. About three years ago, as we were in the thick of the COVID pandemic, I started writing a novel that featured sewing and women’s transformation at its heart.

I’d been writing for decades—mostly nonfiction with brief forays into historical fiction—but this was different. When The Year I Made 12 Dresses was published, I didn’t know it would be number one in a six-book series. That was then.

Today, I am launching a new book. If you read Good Housekeeping: My Unexpected Adventures in Domesticity, you’ll already know Erica Flanagan. But she’s onto a whole new adventure.

Here’s the background:

For almost four decades, I’ve been married to a Newfoundlander who left the island when he was seventeen years old to go to university and never moved back, returning over the years only to visit his parents. Then, last year, something magical happened.

My husband and I took a ten-day trip back to Newfoundland to do a cross-island tour, something he had never experienced. Being a city boy from St. John’s on the east coast of the island, he had never travelled the Viking Trail or hiked in Gros Morne National Park on the Great Northern Peninsula. He had never been to see the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows or sailed a land-locked fjord.

So, we landed in Deer Lake and met our guide with a fancy SUV, just as Erica, Eliza, and the rest of the characters populating my newest book did.

That trip and my mother’s one-hundredth birthday last year inspired this story.

“On the island of Newfoundland at the edge of North America, if you’re not an islander, you’re a “come-from-away.” And if you were born here and left never to return, according to Nora Houlihan, who is about to turn one hundred, you’re the worst kind of CFA.

In celebration of her centenary, Nora has decreed that all her immediate family members—most of whom have deserted her and left her beloved Newfoundland—return to the island for her big day. But before they attend the party, she’s arranged for them to have a cross-island road trip in the hopes they will see what they’re missing and mend their wayward ways.

Her granddaughters Erica Flanagan and Eliza Cohen, feuding cousins, are both perplexed by the dictum but reluctantly agree to join their parents, Nora’s two children, and the rest of the cousins on the trip. Erica, a journalist who hails from  Toronto and Eliza, a hardened New York cookbook author who left not only the country but converted from Catholicism to Judaism, are both less than impressed by the thoughts of hiking in Gros Morne, staying at roadside motels and eating codfish.

With the mysterious Gordie O’Brien as their tour guide, the Houlihan clan grudgingly embarks on the adventure of a lifetime, prying open their minds and, most of all, their hearts to breathtaking landscapes, friendly people and mouthwatering food. By the time they arrive in the city of St. John’s, they are ready to celebrate the one hundred years of the obstinate, tactless, enduringly obnoxious Nora. Or are they?

Before she lets them celebrate, Nora insists on a family meeting. Before she dies, Nora is intent on rattling a few family skeletons. By the time they emerge, the Houlihans will realize that they might have thought they knew their own family, but really, does anyone truly know their family?

They say you can’t choose your family, but if you could, would you choose the one you have?“

Hope you enjoy it.

Link for lots more info: https://patriciajparsons.com/we-came-from-away-that-summer-on-the-rock/

Buy it on Amazon: https://a.co/d/06fjbGEB