AUNTIE’S BIRTHDAY PRESENT
[Illustration: 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.
“That will be pretty!” Margaret had replied. “I’ll ask Sir Bodkin how to
do it.”
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. Second, we must have some
embroidery cotton to make the crosses,” he told Margaret.
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.
[Illustration]
“What is the design to be?” asked Sir Bodkin.
[Illustration: 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 where
the first cross was to be made. Then he sang:
“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 pull out the threads of what is left very carefully from
under the cross-stitches and your towel is trimmed. Take a warm iron and
press the letters on the wrong side on something soft, and the crosses
will stand out on the right side and look very pretty,” said Sir Bodkin.
[Illustration: “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 tissue
paper!” cried Margaret. “Thank you three so much. Auntie will be pleased
with her birthday present, I know.”
[Illustration: 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.