Patched Pants

I thought readers might like a peek at the real patched pants that I based my outfit on in By the Forces of Gravity (pre-sales start March 7!). I didn’t have any money for clothes, but my step-great-grandmother had taught me to sew when I was about five-years-old (during her sermons on sin, I would stitch lavender satchels for her undergarment drawers), so I kept my one pair of pants alive by blanketing them with patches. I would trade patches for sewing favors, swipe patches off of jackets at stores and people gave them to me because they liked my pants.

I wore these pants for years (tweens and teens). They became my voice and my armor. And so when I was picking out clothes for cartoon-me, I only considered the patched pants. And then had to choose a shirt to go with them, the peace-sign shirt I found in the free-box of my imagination. My old button-up cowboy shirt was just too hard to draw over and over again and didn’t hit the spirit of the times as well as my imaginary peace-sign shirt. The cartoon patched pants change with every panel, which I thought was an okay way to indicate the evolving nature of these pants.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this picture of my patched pants.