Wherein the Embroiderer is Seduced

The embroiderer slowly drew the black wool with bright red flowers and the tiny house from the storage basket. She recalled her reluctance to view the step-outs after a year of laboring over her Playful Free-Form Embroidery book. She also recalled that her back was killing her from weeding the garden.

Maybe it was time to sit for a bit and stitch indoors without a swarm of mosquitoes eating her alive. Besides, the step-outs looked so innocent, so friendly.

So in a flurry of activity (and with a mild twinge in her back), she grabbed her scissors, rushing to snip the threads holding the grass shape below the house step-out.

Her hands twisted the house shape and sought the scissors again, only to trim the light blue felt fabric into a cloud shape encircling the house.

Then she hurriedly removed the bright red flower on the right of the black fabric and tossed it into the trash along with her cookie wrappers.

Sure she ate a lot of cookies, so what? It was the flower she had to give up, not the cookies.

As she stitched the house where the red flower had been, she thought, “What madness was this? Tomorrow I must return to my garden. That bindweed is choking out the beans and the tomatoes are looking a little verklempt”. But then she laughed and bent over the embroidery again and popped another cookie into her grinning mouth.

To be continued….

Wherein the Embroiderer is Haunted

Upon opening the box from her editor, the embroiderer glowered at the step-outs from her book, Playful Free-Form Embroidery. Eager to return to her garden, she tossed the step-outs in the Elfa baskets carefully purchased for her new studio. The Elfa shelving system groaned under the weight of the step-outs. She slammed the cupboard door shut and switched off the studio light.

But the step-outs called to her. They haunted her waking moments as she weeded her garden and killed mosquitoes. It was as if the heartless Elfa baskets begged her to return to the studio.

One day the embroiderer cleaned the damp soil from her Sloggers chicken gardening shoes and paused at her studio door. Perhaps one peek a the step-outs would end the haunting. Maybe one glance at the step-outs would reaffirm her wish to put the book’s stitching behind her.

Or would it?

The embroiderer slowly drew an Elfa basket from the cabinet. What was it that compelled her to sort through the step-outs? Her fingers itched to touch the texture of each one, to caress the threads she had stitched so long ago.

As she forced herself to return the step-outs to their Elfa basket her eyes fell on swatch of black wool with bright red flowers and the small house that lay like a companion next to it. It was as if the moonlit garden longed for the promise of daylight as if the tiny house wished for a home.

To be continued….

Wherein We Learn the Origins of FrankenStitch

Once upon a time, there was a book called Playful Free-Form Embroidery.

Six cheerful hand embroidery projects featured in the book; designs made with colorful felt and wool. The intrepid author labored over the embroidery to create the projects for over a year.

Two projects, Natural Gardening and Painting the Town, required hours of stitching to show the stages or step-outs to make the artwork. And so the author of the book made step-out after step-out to illustrate the book and please her editor.

After months of work, the editor accepted the multitude of embroidery step-outs and requested they be photographed in the distant state of California. The exhausted author shipped the step-outs via FedEx with the editor’s promise to publish the book the following spring.

After returning from Fedex, the embroiderer felt the kink in her neck ease. Her work was done. It was up to the slew of editors at the C&T publishing house to complete the book and bring it to the public. She returned to her hobbies of gardening and cursing mosquitoes. Her cuticles grew even more ragged and neglected.

Months later, a box arrived on her doorstep. The embroiderer swatted at the mosquitoes surrounding the box and squinted at the return address label. The editor had returned the forgotten step-outs. With a familiar kink returning to her neck, the author dragged the box to her studio and dropped it on the floor.

To be continued….