Simpler and Simpler

 

 

Simpler and Simpler

Heavy clouds press down on the house and fields. The animals clomp around in their muddy pens, their coats sodden.

It is cold in my chair near the window, but I sit close to catch the weak light. I poke the needle up through a silky red scrap of fabric and pull out the long blue thread, crossing it evenly over the last stitch into a bold x. It is getting simpler and simpler, the stitching on my sampler. Sampler. Sampler. Simpler. Simpler. Another cross. Mama said it is called a sampler because it shows my fine needlework. It also shows how I’m really an artist, but I can’t say so out loud. The farmers around here frown upon artists. They talk about “fast women from Chicago, those singers and artists. ‘Whores’ is more like it,” I heard Dickie Burnside say in Grandpa’s mercantile.

This sampler is a collage made out of scraps of old dresses and Sunday shirts, bed sheets and dishtowels. I even got a piece of our parlor curtains on my sampler. The colors don’t match and the patterns and textures aren’t right together, so I decided to make that part of its beauty and added more colors of thread and more stitches than I ever could have imagined. Betty Johnson called it garish. She’s just jealous I have so many different pieces arranged with such, what was it grandma called it? “Finesse.”

I’ll be dressmaking in no time. I’ve been collecting buttons and special objects to use as fasteners: acorn caps, mouse bones, and small pieces of wood.

Guess I’m going to be a fast woman.