Solo Not an Easy Job

[Naiya]

28th Day of Summer 514 AV


She needed a thinner needle, she realized, watching small needle holes appear in the linen each time she attempted to line up her stitch. They were not so obvious that she thought someone might notice, but a critical eye may check her work and reprimand her for the sloppy technique.

She frowned at the crooked line of stitching, it was far from prefect, but she would have liked not to need to begin again. She couldn't take the risk, too soon back in the shop to let such an easy fix slip away.

She glanced around for a seam ripper, the proper tool for pulling up the threads, but it lay on the other workbench, and covered as she was in the folds of cloth, she could not reach it. She instead pulled her dagger from the sheath at her hip, nearly dropping it in the process, and sliced the threads still connected to her needle as close to the cloth as she could manage.

She pinned the needle through her apron, thread still dangling from the needle's eye. She eyed the other needles, ranging from a thick upholstery needles to embroidery needles and the fine sharp needles.

She pulled a middle ground between the upholstery and embroidering needles, lifting it towards the light to find the eye. She grabbed for her thread, loosing it with her teeth as she unwound a length of it from the spool.

She was running out of hands, she realized with a sigh, an extra would be so useful. She set the spool atop the fabric in her lap, careful not to let it spill across the floor, and -after a few attempts- guided the thread through the loop of the eye.

[Naiya]

This needle would work better, she told herself as she gathered a length of thread, measuring it against the hem she was fixing and then doubling that length. Well quadrupling it, really, since she had a double length of thread strung through her needle.

She brought the loose end to the one still attached to the spool, letting the needle hang gracelessly from the thread pinched between her fingers. She pulled her dagger once more, cutting the thread just past her fingers, and nearly nicking herself in the process.

She tied off the string, wrapping both ends around her finger and rolling the loop down until the loose parts stuck out past the loop. She pulled the loose ends to tighten the knot and found she had missed the loop.

A frown pursed her features, and she attempted the know again, looping the string an extra time before rolling it down her finger and pulling the thread through.

The knot held this time, though it would have been better closer to the ends of the string, she tugged it in the right direction tightening it and shortening the loose threads. Still, she found her dagger once more, placing the sharp edge against the threads and sawing slightly until they fell to her lap.

[Naiya]

Needle ready, she returned to the hem of the dress, still pinned carefully in place. She lifted the skirt, turning the hem in and pressing the needle through both layers of fabric. The knot caught on the inside, she pressed the needle back through in an approximation of a close stitch to follow the first.

The metal gleamed from far to the left of the knot of thread that was her marker. She bit her lip, pulling the needle back through the cloth and finding that she couldn't see the mark left behind. Pleased with the small victory she poked the tip of the needle through once more, closer, but this time too low.

A few more attempts and she got a nice even stitch. Five small loops through the hem - not the outer fabric- close together and tight formed a solid fold. Another slanting stitch went through the outer fabric, and came back through after a few slightly less drastically wrong attempts to make an even line.

The process repeated until a line of about about five inches was made, alternating between the visible outer stitches and the small, inside, blind stitches. A double stitch on the outer piece of fabric, a knotting by way of looping the thread and slipping the needle through, acted as a safety of sorts, preventing a single segment of frayed thread from undoing the entire hem.

Five more inches followed, a process that took maybe fifteen chimes, and then another knotting. More chimes, another knot.

She had a long way to go.

[Naiya]

Her stitching had been off, she realized, as she reached the beginning of her hem. First she had taken a wrong measurement of how much thread she would need and had to tie off the thread and begin a new section. Then when she had finally reached the beginning of the first section, the knotting was off almost an half-inch where the pins holding the hem in place had sagged.

She cursed under her breath, hefting the dress from her lap to get the seam ripping tool.

When she returned to the table, setting the garment back in her lap, she frowned at the tiny mostly even stitches, finding that they were pulled tightly enough that they were not likely to fray. A good thing, unless you needed to rip them out of the cloth.

Careful not to catch the fabric, Rue slid the tip of the tool beneath the first stitch, pulling upwards as the tool slid to cut into the thread.

She pulled a few stitches out, back to the closest knot, and then stopped to check the hem. It was still crooked. She pulled to the next knot, and found that this was where the slant started, and if she was careful, she would be able to correct it from there.

[Naiya]

After threading her needle a third time and correcting the length of the hem, Rue was faced with the mismatched endpoints of the hem once more. She did not have room for two more of the pattern, but the space left was too big for one.

She chewed he lip a moment before deciding that stretching one across the gap was better than trying to squeeze in two. She checked the knot on her thread, and then slid the needle through the fabric, guiding it back through after a few sticks of the needle for placement.

She stretched as much distance as would make sense between the five stitches so that when her thread was ready to be knotted once more through the front of the dress, it aligned with the very first stitch.

Perfect.

Well sort of.

She lifted the dress, draping it over the table top so that she could see the hem. The thread wasn't an exact match, which is why she had done the blind stitch, and the hem was a little crooked still.

It was close though. Really close. She wasn't sure an untaught eye would notice. With that thought in mind, she flipped the hem up and trimmed the loose ends of the threads, finishing the hem by erasing the evidence of the work.

Finished, finally, she hung the dress on a stand with a few others, all done by her, and all not quite the quality of the best shops, but more affordable because of it.

[Khida]

Rue Nightsong

Skill	Points
Sewing	+5
Observation	+1
Planning	+1

• Sewing: an almost-straight, almost-even line
• Sewing: blind stitch
• Sewing: hemming a skirt
• Sewing: proper and improper removal of a seam

Notes

A most straightforward thread. As always, please let me know if you think I missed anything in this award. Also, please edit your request to show this thread has been graded.