The workroom is a landscape of silk and wool and linen, great spools of each in every color beyond creation. There are patterns and florals and stripes, and a bin the size of a feeding trough filled with scraps. It is from this bin that I have pieced together my own clothing, creating a paneled skirt and vest made from the same materials that dressed the most important woman in our country. But I know better than to flaunt my theft. Everything Marie Antoinette wears has been designed by the famous Mademoiselle Bertin and meticulously recorded by the court’s scribes; I fear I would be taken to task for the few inches of fabric featuring the sprigged pattern of peonies the queen wore to receive the archduke of Provence. So I strip the fabric to unrecognizable proportions and wear it with the reversed side out to further disguise its origin.
    I carry all the tools of my trade with me. Three scissors—the largest sharp enough to cut through velvet without leaving a hint of thread; the smallest can reach between fabric and flesh to snip a wayward stitch. They are wrapped in silk and housed in a leather pouch I wear around my waist. Inspired by all the guards and soldiers milling about, I fancy these my weapons, though I pray I never need to use them. My sleeves are full, not only because the style is cooler in the heat of summer but because I’ve fashioned a special hem wherein I store spools of thread. On my wrist I wear a boar’s hair cuff festooned with needles of various sizes. Other pockets have been stitched into my patchwork skirt, filled with measuring silks and sticks of chalk and thick paper packets speared with pins.
    The result is something that makes me look somewhat like a gypsy, according to the women who share my duty.
    “Ridiculous,” Madame Gisela sneers the first time I don the garment after snipping the last thread. “You look like someone more suited to living in a tent and stealing horses than stitching garments for a queen.”
    Behind her criticism, though, lurks a grudging respect for my skill. I crafted the garment in only two days, working blindly without a pattern, sewing every stitch myself. She declares me to be a fine little seamstress. Une couturiére. From that moment, I have no other identity at Versailles.

Taken from The Seamstress by Allison Pittman. Copyright © 2019.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.