Completed One stitch, Two stitch

[Naiya]

Summer, Day 58 514 AV

"I don't want you to change the whole thing, I want it to be slimmer through the sleeves." The woman told her, and she nodded, searching for a way to make it more clear to her.

"Yes ma'am, I would just have to place a few stitches in the fabric, it could be fixed in a bell's time." The ruffling of the sleeve at the shoulder and wrist meant that such a fix would take almost no effort. A single cut at the seam to thin out the fabric, and a few stitches around the shoulder and wrist to fix the ruffling.

"Oh." She seemed less enthused to be getting what she wanted so quickly, like the short time would mean it was somehow less than what she wanted, or at least that was what could be gathered from the signing of her body. "Well that seems fair." She continued, the falseness in her voice something Rue made an effort to ignore.

"Of course, ma'am, if you wanted to comeback for it tomorrow instead, you would be more than welcome to, I don't want to impose upon your plans for the day." Rue was pleased with her response, it would allow the woman to pretend as she wished, whether it took a day or a bell, and she made the trouble seem like it was a scheduling conflict rather than vanity.

"Would that be alright?" The woman seemed cheered, pleased, and Rue nodded in response.

"Of course."

[Naiya]

The woman left and Rue was feced with the fixing of the shirt. Sewing shears made quick work of the hem, although Rue's cut was not quite as smooth as it could have been. She frowned at the cut, trimming the jagged edges with a bit more care and then folding the hem over.

She threaded a needle with a color that was just on this side of a perfect match, and placed a few single stitches in the cloth to keep the material from unfurling. There was a lot of knot tying and thread cutting involved in such a thing, and it took her a bit longer than she imagined, but it was worth the effort to have a clean line.

Swing stitching the hem was both harder and easier. It took only a single measuring of the length, a single tying of the threads together - although that had taken her a second attempt to make happen - and then she was ready to begin.

She had to work with one hand inside the sleeve to make sure she didn't catch both layers of fabric - a mistake she would not make twice. Then the needle just had to scoop up both sides of the fabric. She pushed the needle up through the fabric from the inside, keeping the knot from showing on the outside, then back down and through. That was easy enough, lining up the next stitch was more difficult, poking the needle through part way, finding that she had missed her mark, and having to repeat the attempt.

It only took a few tries to hit the spot, then aligning the stitch with the other visible mark was easy. Swing stitching was easy, once you lined up the stitches it was just a circle tied around the seam, the focal point the opening that was being stitched closed.

Maybe circle was wrong, more a spiral, but that was hardly the point. It didn't take long to make loops around the closing hem, thought if she was better at lining up her stitches it would have gone even faster.

She repeated the entire process on the left sleeve, though her second cut was a bit cleaner than the first cut on the other sleeve. Swing stitching both sleeves had taken a little more than half a bell's time, but Rue imagined she would have the entire day to finish if she needed it.

To cover the hemming on the sleeve, she took the remaining thread in her needle, retying the end, and pinched a fold in the top, just beside the hem, and covered the line with the pinched fabric. A single knotting stitch held the ruffle in place.

She repeated the motion at the wrist, folding in the opposite direction to add a slimming shape to the fabric.

Twice more she stitched, cut and retied her thread until both sleeves in the section on the underside of the sleeve was smoothly hidden by ruffling.

She grinned, pleased at the work she had done. Though had the woman returned in a single bell as Rue had said, the shirt would not have been done. She would have to work on her timing, either padding her estimates, or working more efficiently.

Maybe she would endeavor to do both.

[Naiya]

With one task completed, Rue had the opportunity to work on her embroidering, something she hadn't practiced much in recent days.

With her skill still not quite what she wished it to be, she found that it was better to practice on scrap cloth, with cheap thread rather than with the nicer embroidery floss. Though she still chose a fine thread that would fit the embroidery needle, it was one that would sooner fray and wear than the silks that usually were used for decoration.

She wasn't very good at making patterns up yet either, so she found drawing out the pattern in chalk was a much better choice than trying to make it up with her needle. So she set a small square of cloth on the table in front of her and began to gently trace out a path of interlocking knots.

Her drawing wasn't much better than her embroidery, and she ended up with crooked lines and rounded edges, and smears of chalk where she had to rub away a mistake. Her hand was beginning to tire as she finished the shape of the first of three bold lines, the top most line of the knots, with gaps and spaces littered throughout where the other threads would cover the shape and make their own appearances. That was okay though, because as weak as the lines were, she could still make out the shape she wanted, and her familiarity with the knot-work that decorated so much of the tent city would serve as an extra guide.

Threading the much more narrow embroidery needle was a challenge, thinking she had managed the task only to find she had missed the loop completely, or watching the thread hit the edge of the eye and bend away from the metal.

With a frown she canted the needle to the side, so that the eye was at an angle to her view, and then placing the thread against her finger she slid the needle towards the thread instead of the other way around. After a not quite success on the first attempt, the second yielded a better result. Only to be undone by clumsy excitement.

She cursed her hands for their betrayal and tried once more, this time more careful not to pull the thread back out after making it through the eye. She slid a greater length of thread through before attempting to pull through from the other end of the thread, and measured what seemed like far too much thread for the task before tying a knot in the ends of the thread.

The early stitches were the hardest. Not only did she have the trouble of lining up her stitches, but the almost excessive length of the thread was difficult to pull through the material. Her first stitch along the line was crooked, slanting slightly across the line, and her second was a bit too long, though it traveled a straighter line. She was just using the most basic stitch for outlining, a straight stitch, not that she had too many more options available to her. So it was easy enough once she got into the pattern to just focus on making straight evenly sized stitches. Some of her gaps between the thread were a little large, or skewed off to the sides, but it wasn't so important that she go back and undo the stitches, this practice was more a matter of seeing the errors and preventing herself from making more of the same ones.

About halfway around the square, she found that her thread had tangled, and she had to pull and prod it until she could find and untie the knot. It was difficult, but she managed. It did, however, throw off her pattern, making her lose the steady tread of her needle through the cloth. It was like starting over.

She bit back a sigh. Working carefully to fall back into the pattern she had set for herself. Up through the cloth, down the line a small length, back through the cloth, up again just below the end of the last stitch. Down a small length, down through the cloth, back up once more.

When she was ready to turn back and begin again along side the previous line, she stopped herself. She wasn't sure how long exactly the process had taken, but it was enough dawdling about when she could be doing something more practical. She slid the needle though the cloth to hold its place and tucked the entire piece of fabric under her workbench.

The day was growing old with out her attention, and she had other things to be done, like fixing the displays that had been searched through by the woman who had come in looking for a blouse. Or reading the shop for closing, or fixing the rip in the embroidery display.

There were so many things to do even in a small shop. She couldn't afford to play with embroidery all day.

As if to remind her of the truth of her thoughts a young man appeared in the door way of the shop, looked in towards her and began to explain that he was looking for a dress for his mother.

"Of course I can help you. Please, come inside and look around." Rue offered, extending her hand towards the variety of dresses. "You might like something for the fall?"

[Naiya]

"The fall.." His hands signed, a sort of confused contemplation, as though he hadn't quite realized there was more to buying a dress than coming in and declaring his desires.

"Mmhm, you could choose from thicker fabrics, or dresses with longer sleeves." She waited while he absorbed that, watching him look differently at the dresses, trying to pick apart the fabric and the styles from the brief brush of fingers across the exposed cloth.

"I don't know, I wouldn't want her to be unable to wear it when the seasons grew warm once again." He responded, turning to look at Rue while he spoke. She nodded in response, an understanding of where he was coming from signed by her hands, but with a tint of polite disagreement.

"You could buy her a lighter weight dress, but even with a cloak it may be too cold for the winter, though likely it would last her the fall..." She trailed off, considering for a moment what to say next. "It is my preference to have a dress that will keep me warm, rather than to be cold in the coming seasons."

It only took him a moment to choose his counter argument, his body a line of decisiveness. "She has family to keep her warm, a fire too, but in the heat there is no relief." His hands signed an intense finality, decisions made. Experience had shown her before that arguing would do her no good at this point, so with a small curtsy and a sign on her hands of acceptance she spoke again.

"Then you would do better to look at clothing back here, these are more likely to be suited for the warm seasons." She gestured a quick please follow me, more a courtesy than anything else, and led him back to where the summer weight clothing had been moved.

She watched as he moved forward, lifting the lighter cloths and examining the colors, and she wondered if it really was enough to have a family to keep one warm in the winter.

[Khida]

Rue Nightsong

Skill	Points
Diplomacy	+1
Drawing	+1
Embroidery	+2
Observation	+1
Planning	+2
Rhetoric	+1
Sewing	+2
Socialization	+1

• Diplomacy: offering alternatives
• Drawing: the messy nature of chalk
• Embroidery: straight stitch
• Planning: the importance of padding time estimates
• Planning: matching resource quality to the task
• Sewing: methods to slim down a sleeve
• Sewing: swing tack

Notes

This was a neat little thread. I like how it suddenly turned philosophical at the end. One comment: Watch out for that first-person viewpoint!

You get a few points in a lot of things here. I think the awards should all be transparent, but if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.