The Drowning Spool (A Needlecraft Mystery) Read Free

glanced at the back side, and handed it along. The last woman handed it back to Betsy. All were smiling in anticipation.
    “The reverse looks like parallel lines of short stitches, which is what it is.” Betsy held up the back of the piece. “You work it on this side, the reverse side, and the loops form on the front.
    “I want you to take up the smaller piece of fabric first, the one with two hearts on it.”
    Four of her students already knew how to loosen the embroidery hoop until it opened. Betsy showed them how to smooth the fabric across the bottom hoop, slide the top one over it, and tighten it again.
    “Make sure your pattern is smooth and not pulled sideways or otherwise distorted.” The very thin woman made an exclamation and a noise of frustration as she loosened the top hoop and adjusted her fabric.
    “Let’s start with the inner heart,” said Betsy. “Pick a color and cut off a length about two feet long. This method of stitchery goes through floss really quickly, so you’ll do it many times. This means you’ll get lots of practice in threading the needle. When you get more skilled, you can cut your floss as long as one yard—even longer. You’ll be working this with three strands of floss, and the skeins are six strands.”
    Betsy showed them how to tap the cut end of the floss to make the strands separate and pull three of them from the others. Most already knew the trick. Betsy smiled. How much easier it was to teach people who already had the basics down!
    “Now, take out the punch needle from the glass tube,” she instructed. The tubes had fat rubber stoppers on them. The punch needle was a little over three inches long, and consisted of a series of graduated cylinders, the last one a hollow needle with a hole in its tip.
    “In the glass tube that holds the needle there’s also a threader. It’s a very fine wire, essential to punch needle but easy to lose, so keep careful track of it. If you drop it on the floor, it’s next to impossible to find again. Best to put it back in the tube every time after you use it.”
    She showed them how to feed the threader loop-first through the hollow needle and up the shaft of the punch until it appeared at the other end. The floss was threaded through the loop and pulled back down and out the end of the needle. Then the blank end of the threader was poked through the hole near the tip of the needle and pulled through. Finally, the threader was removed and carefully stored in the glass tube.
    Then the floss was pulled back until about a quarter inch was just visible through the hole in the end of the needle. One woman made an annoyed exclamation—she had pulled the floss completely through the hole and had to use the threader to pull it through again.
    Betsy demonstrated the punching motion used to feed the floss into the fabric. Some of the women got up and came to stand behind her, watching. She kept her movements slow and deliberate, and the taut fabric made a little popping sound as the needle went through it.
    “Punch through until it stops, lift the needle just barely back out of the fabric, move it a tiny way, less than an eighth of an inch, and punch down again,” she instructed them. “Go slow until you get a feel for this.”
    The women began working on their practice piece. In about two minutes the room was filled with the sound of rhythmic thumping as the group’s hollow needles pierced the pieces of tightly stretched fabric. The obese woman was fastest, the others more deliberate. Some of them turned their lap frames over and exclaimed in pleasure at the raised texture formed by their needles. Others saw with dismay that they were not punching the stitches together closely enough.
    “To correct an error,” Betsy said, “lift the needle up until the stitches you’ve made pull out. Then pull the floss back out through the needle until it’s short above the fabric. If you want to retrace your steps, you have to turn the hoop around.