Violetta Craft's Arc

Chapter 29 of 65

The next morning Lymber drove Violetta to the family locker and helped her carry the purple silk-wool blend, the cut pattern pieces, and the folder of sketches to the downtown studio. Violetta laid it all out on the wide table and stepped back. The A-line was clean. The neckline sat right. The panel was narrower than last year, and the fabric had the matte weight she wanted. She should have felt ready. Instead she saw a beginner's dress. One clear idea, the judge had told her. A simple silhouette was the idea, but simple was not the same as signature. Without one bold detail, the judges would flip past her card. She had six weeks. She needed the detail today. She left Elowen with Jordie and walked three blocks to a refined studio she had passed a hundred times without going in, a two-story space with tall glass and dress forms in the front window. She told the woman at the counter she was a junior competitor and asked if anyone could look at a pattern for five minutes. The woman called down a tailor from the upper floor, who spread Violetta's sketches across a cutting table and studied them without speaking. Then she said the dress was correct and forgettable. She tapped the shoulder line. Put the detail here, she said. Not the hem, not the waist. A hand-covered fabric button placket running from the collarbone to the underarm, offset from the seam, in the same purple. Small work. Slow work. Nothing else on the dress. Violetta counted the buttons in her head, counted the hours, counted Elowen's nap windows. Eighteen buttons, hand-wrapped, hand-stitched. Four weeks of evenings if she held the schedule. She thanked the tailor and walked back to her studio and started cutting the placket strip before she took off her coat. She texted Jordie that she would be late. She texted Lymber that she needed the afternoon slot on Thursday. The dress had its one idea now, and the idea had a spine. The deadline was five weeks and six days out, and every one of those days had a button in it.