Fashions and fabrics, clothes and their construction, are important elements in many of our books. So this week the theme of the Post is dressmaking, beginning with Emily Fox-Seton in The Making of a Marchioness. Naïve, good-natured, well-educated Emily is from a good family which has fallen on hard times. Nevertheless, she is content to earn her living sewing and dressmaking. When she marries and her fortunes change, she carries on for the "mere sentimental bliss of it". This is The Young Seamstress (1907, Touchstones Rochdale) by Harold Knight.