The Pattern Artist

One of my favorite childhood memories is remembering when my mother would sew us pajamas out of whatever fabric we picked out from the store. Even now many years later, I would LOVE to do that for my own kids, well teens and young adults. I guess that is where my love of quilting has come from and also why I absolutely LOVED the novel, The Pattern Artist by Nancy Moser. It such a well-researched novel on pattern artists, those that made the patterns that home sewers like my mom could use to make their own clothes from, so it is wonderful to learn a bit more about those women who took it upon themselves to help.

The Pattern Artist by Nancy Moser tells just how one woman's dreams to see a future for herself despite the odds against her based both on society's standards and where she came from. Annie Wood might be considered a perpetual run-away. She ran from her parents when they deemed she wasn't worthy of anything more than where their lot in life fell. However she took it upon herself to work the Kidds, a family of influence as a maid and travel to America with them in hopes of one day becoming a true ladies maid. For now, she was content to travel along as a house maid doing some sewing and alterations for the women in the family. She had hopes that the ladies maids were passing along her contributions to them so that one day her true talents might be used.

However when one of the footman, Mr. Grasston, makes it his intent to press himself upon Annie in unsuitable ways, she knows she must find a way out of the household, even if it means her future dreams must fall by the wayside. In face, she learns that he has made several passes at others in the Kidd household as well, including the one friend she met, Iris and her brother Danny. After learning that Grasston has abused Iris, Annie makes plans for all three to runaway and begin a new start in America knowing that all three possess the drive to not settle for anything less than their own say in their futures, especially when Annie learns that the ladies maids have been passing off her work as their own. If she doesn't strike while the iron is hot, she is doomed to settle for what she has and that isn't good enough right now. Her future now lies in the hands of working for Macy's department store as a sewing clerk using all the skills she has self-taught herself to make a living, but will her past come back to haunt her in ways she could never imagine?

I received The Pattern Artist by Nancy Moser compliments of Barbour Publishing and Net Galley. The theme in this novel is that Annie soon learns that God is working all around her if she just opens her eyes. God is simply waiting for her to notice Him. At the end of the novel she can look back and see how the ripples of all the bad things she believed has happened to her has been for her good and has lead her to where she finds herself at the end, better than she ever believed. At the conclusion the author provides insights of her own on how she utilized the history of Butterick to determine the way this novel will playout and how working at Macy's would tie in a bit of history about the Staus family, who would subsequently die aboard the ill-fated Titanic in 1912. I absolutely could NOT put this book down until I finished and for me, that is a sign that this one is a 5 out of 5 stars. I only wish it would last so much longer as I found myself completely immersed in the lives of Annie Wood and her friends.

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The Pattern Artist by Nancy Moser

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