  Designs in Cross-Stitch “What a lovely rainy day!” cried Margaret coming into her room singing happily to herself. She did not mind the rain at all for she was very anxious to get to work. It would soon be her Auntie’s birthday and Margaret wanted to give her a present. So Mother had bought down-town a linen towel with the ends finished with hemstitching done by machine. “You can trim it at one end, above the hem, with a design done in cross-stitch,” she had said to Margaret. Margaret now had the towel and a book of cross-stitch designs in her hands as she came into the room. “I wonder which would be nicer, a design or her initials done in cross-stitch?” she was asking herself. Looking up she saw Sir Bodkin hopping out of the work-basket. “So it’s cross-stitch to-day, My Lady?” he said. “Yes it is. How bright you are to guess,” Margaret answered laughing. She showed him the towel to be trimmed and waited for him to speak. “First of all, we must have some canvas fine enough to work eight cross-stitches to the inch. We use the threads of the canvas as guides where the cross-stitches are to be made. She went to ask her mother for these things. They were found in her magic sewing-box, and when Sir Bodkin saw her coming back into the room with the canvas and blue embroidery cotton in her hand he called Baster out to help. Baster fastened the canvas nice and straight to the center of one end of the towel, on the right side just above the hem. Then Crewel was harnessed with a strand of the blue cotton in his long eye. “What is the design to be?” asked Sir Bodkin. Cross-stitch “I think it would be very pretty to mark this towel, which is for my Auntie’s birthday, with her initials,” replied Margaret. “They are the same as mine, ‘M. A.’ This book of patterns shows how many squares to use to make the letters.” “Yes,” said the King, “the letters will be large or small according to the number of squares used. Very good. Now, sir, watch your step and be sure to step over the canvas threads and not through them, or we can’t pull them out when the work is finished!” The Crewel One, who stood waiting, stepped to the wrong side of the towel and fastened the cotton with two or three tiny back steps “Step out at one corner, cross, step in another, Out again at the third, to the fourth one cross over. Now through to the wrong side; to start the next one, The top thread of each cross, the same way must run.” “There you are!” cried Sir Bodkin, “that’s the first cross-stitch. The others are just like it. Follow the pattern and make a cross-stitch where the pattern shows a square.” Margaret followed the pattern very carefully with her eye and guided the Crewel One with her fingers to make the cross-stitches in both letters. Jauntily they stepped along until the work was done and the “M. A.” embroidered. Then the thread was fastened securely. “Now we are through with the canvas. Cut it away from around the letters. Then “Press the letters on the wrong side” “Then I shall fold it in three lengthwise folds as Mother does, with the center on top to show the letters, and wrap it up in white MA “You’re very welcome, My Lady, so say I and so say they!” cried the King, very much pleased, too. After Margaret had run off to show her mother the pretty towel finished, Sir Bodkin said to his two subjects, “She is a pretty nice little girl. She’s always thinking up something to do for other people.” They both agreed with him and all three slipped into the work-basket to the needle-book and went to sleep with the other One-Eyed Fairies. |
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