Chapter VII: The Embroidery Patterns in the Magic Book

IN the days that passed after Joyce and Jimsi made the valentines and cards, ever so many things happened. They played other things beside crow plays—checkers and dominoes and Messenger Boy games. But, after all, the Magic Book with the fun in it was best of all. Crow had written them both letters and in his last letter he had said:

“DEAR JIMSI:

Find your own something to do in the Magic Book I gave
you. If you _think_, you’ll find something more that is
as jolly as valentine-making.”

Jimsi went over and over the Magic Book in The Happy Shop wondering what she could find to do with the papers. It seemed as if almost everything must have been done when paper doll dresses, paper doll furniture, cards, and motion picture play had been done!

Aunt Phoebe wouldn’t even give her a hint. “Do as the crow says, dear,” she urged. “Put on your thinking-cap!”

“But I can’t think!” declared Jimsi. “I did make up the valentines!”

“Try to find something else. The crow and I might help but we want you to have the fun of discovering all for yourself!”

But Jimsi couldn’t find anything more to do. She spent the morning looking over the papers and then she wrote a letter to the crow and put it in the mail-box.

“DEAR CROW:

Your Magic Book is like a puzzle and I am not a bit
good at puzzles. Please tell me something nice to do
with the colored papers of the magic wall paper sample
book.

Lovingly,
_Jimsi._

P. S.

I enclose a pretty flower that I cut out for you from
the Magic Book. I think if I had my scrapbook from home
I could use these flowers for scrap-pictures to paste
in it. I can’t think of anything else.”

To this letter the crow replied the next day in a little letter that Jimsi found in the mail-box. The crow’s letter said:

“DEAR JIMSI:

Your suggestion about using the flower-patterns for
scrapbook decorations is good. But you must puzzle
longer and find still other jolly plays in your Magic
Book.

Playfully,
_Crow._

P. S.

I’m going to give you a perfectly splendid surprise. On
Friday at four o’clock—after your nap—come to The Happy
Shop and see what it is. It’s the _nicest_ that could
happen, I think.

Your play friend,
_Caw Caw._

P. S.

No fair asking Aunt Phoebe to tell what the surprise
is. She won’t say!”

To this Jimsi replied in another letter to the crow:

“DEAR CAW CAW:

I will try to be good and I won’t tease to know what
the surprise is. I hope it is candy or ice cream or
something new to play with The Magic Book. If I thought
you could do it, I’d wish that you’d put Mother and
Henry and Katherine on a magic carpet like the one in
_The Arabian Nights Entertainment_. But it’s no use
to ask that for Henry has to go to school and Mother
couldn’t come away and leave Katherine.

Lovingly your little girl,
_Jimsi._

P. S.

Aunt Phoebe mustn’t think I’m homesick but I’d love to
see Mother and Henry and Katherine ever so much!”

Then, having mailed this letter in the crow mail-box, Jimsi put on her cloak and cap and rubbers and went over to see Joyce. Joyce had her workbasket out and she had some bits of linen in her lap.

“Hello, Jimsi,” she greeted. “I was just wishing for you frightfully hard. The crow told me to hunt for a new amusement in the Magic Book and I _found_ something I’m just wild to try. I think it’s going to go splendidly!”

“What is it?” Jimsi inquired. “Scrap-pictures?”

“No, not scrap-pictures! It’s nicer than scrap-pictures! Scrap-pictures aren’t _anything_!”

“Well, I can’t guess it,” declared Jimsi. “The crow wanted _me_ to find something in _my_ Magic Book, but I looked and looked and couldn’t find anything but scrap-pictures. Maybe your book is better than mine. The papers that are in your book and my book are quite different.”

“Don’t you like to do fancy-work?” inquired Joyce, suddenly changing the conversation and indicating her workbasket.

“Why, yes,” returned Jimsi. “But _that_ can’t be done with wall paper!”

“Yes it can!” shouted the little lame girl. “I found patterns _and_ patterns for fancy-work in my Magic Book, I did!”

“Well, well, well!” ejaculated Jimsi. “I never! Who would have thought of it! How do you find patterns for fancy-work?”

“I just look for them,” Joyce said. “You see, I was puzzle-hunting for something new to do with the Magic Book. The crow told me to use my own eyes and try to discover my own fun. I was turning the leaves of the book and all of a sudden I came to _this_.” The little lame girl turned the leaves of her magic wall paper book that lay on the big table beside her. “See,” she pointed, “there’s an embroidery thing to do: it’s one of those little bows with hanging ends that ladies wear at their necks to finish their collars. I could trace that all off and transfer it with carbon paper to a piece of linen and then do outline stitch of the pattern and finish the linen edge with button-hole stitch. That’s _number one_!”

“I could make one for Mother, couldn’t I?” said Jimsi. “Let’s both try it. You can give yours to your mother or to Aunt Phoebe. Aunt Phoebe wears those bow-things. She has ever so many in her bureau drawer. She wears them with shirtwaists.”

“Well, I haven’t finished yet about the patterns—look here,” declared Joyce, and again she turned the pages of the Magic Book and stopped at a page of colored design. “Here’s _number two_!”

“What is it—I don’t know. I can see that it could be a pattern for embroidery, but—Oh, yes, I _do_ know what it is! It is a doily pattern! _Isn’t it?_”

“Hurrah!” sang Joyce. “You guessed! It _is_! All one has to do is to cut out the pattern and then take a sheet of carbon paper and transfer it to a piece of square linen. If you cut the design out larger, it can be used for a linen sofa-pillow with the four little clover things worked in each corner like the pattern in the wall paper. It would be easy embroidery—I could do it! I can’t do difficult needle-work. And, of course, if one didn’t have carbon paper or know how to use it, one could copy the design with tissue paper and trace it that way—sometimes carbon paper that one uses makes a blue spot on the cloth, if one leans on it with any pressure.”

Jimsi was looking hard at the doily pattern. “Do you know about stencils?” she asked.

“No,” replied the little lame girl. “What are they?”

“They’re designs that are cut out of stiff paper or tin or wood. You take a paint brush and paint over the openings and it makes a reproduction of the design. _I_ think we could cut that pattern out and make a stencil pattern of it. Maybe the paper’s thick enough. Let’s try!”

“All right,” returned Joyce. “But, first, let’s see the embroidery. We can try stencils afterwards.”

Jimsi agreed. “Let’s see the rest.”

“Well, here’s _number three_,” indicated Joyce. “_That_ is a cross-stitch pattern. Do you do cross-stitch? It’s easy to do. That’s the stitch they use to make pictures on samplers. You’ve seen samplers?”

“Aunt Phoebe has one in her study. It’s framed. The little girls used to work them long ago. That was the way they learned to sew—by making samplers.”

“I can show you cross-stitch,” Joyce volunteered. “You won’t even have to transfer this cross-stitch pattern. It’s quite plain even though it isn’t all little crosses in the wall paper. It would be pretty embroidered on the end of a guest-room towel. Miss Phoebe showed me one she was doing once. It had flowers on it something like these.”

“And the cluster of flowers in the wall paper might be used on something else.”

“Or one could take one’s choice.” The little lame girl reached for her tissue paper. “I’m going to try to transfer the doily pattern first. I’ll make the doily, I think. I’m going to do it and you can watch, if you like. I’ve often transferred patterns.”

The little lame girl placed her tissue paper upon the design in the wall paper and followed her pencil very carefully along the outline beneath. “One ought to use a soft pencil,” she explained. “The hard pencils don’t transfer so well.” And then she lifted the tissue paper up and showed Jimsi the design that she had taken off the wall paper in pencil. “To trace it,” she said, “all one has to do is to turn the tissue paper over and go over the outline again, placing the first pencil marks next the cloth. Then when one goes over the tissue paper’s pencil outline, the pencil marks under the point of the pencil are pressed on the cloth—and there’s your pattern!”

“Let’s try it,” Jimsi urged. “You start the doily and I’ll make the bow-thing in a pattern for Caw Caw to send Aunt Phoebe. Then I want to try stencils.”

They were both silently busy for a long time. Joyce transferred her design to a piece of white linen that her mother had given her. Jimsi labored over the neck-bow pattern that she wanted to send Aunt Phoebe in a crow letter. She copied her design on a sheet of white pad paper.

“What color shall I use to outline my design?” suddenly inquired Joyce. “It could be almost any color.”

“Why most any color,” thought Jimsi. “How about white or blue?”

“We have blue china,” mused Joyce. “I’ll do it in blue. Do you know, if I wanted to, I’d turn it into a top to put on a square pin-cushion—_I could_!”

The two little girls laughed. Oh, the Magic Book was proving very magic indeed! _Very magic!_

“Now, while you sew, I’m going to try stencils and see if I can make them out of wall paper designs. _I_ think I can! Stencils are ever so easy to use. They’re splendid fun, if you like to paint.”

“Well, go ahead. I’ll watch.”

So Jimsi took a piece of the paper that she found in the little lame girl’s Magic Book. “It’s queer paper,” she mused, “all glossy. I think it must be the kind they use in papering kitchens and bath-rooms. It’s stiff and exactly right for stencil-cutting. You know there’s a special knife that comes to use for cutting stencils but I’m using scissors. I think this doesn’t need a knife. It’s easy to cut with scissors if you leave the edges clean-cut. I’m leaving the paper and _only_ cutting out the form of the design.”

All the eight squares in the wall paper pattern, Jimsi cut carefully out. Next, she cut around the edge of the tulip-flower that was in the center of the pattern design. And she cut out the tulip leaves, too. “This is _number four_,” she laughed. “Hooray! It’s done! Now tell me where your paints are and I’ll show _you_ something!”

The paints were in the big table drawer and Jimsi went to fetch water. She asked for a bit of blotter and the little lame girl told her where to find it.

“You have to dry your paint brush on the blotter before painting stencil designs,” explained Jimsi, “otherwise the paint runs all over. Always use a dry brush—I mean as dry as will paint!” She shook her brush at Joyce as if she were a teacher at school with a pencil trying to drum a lesson into a lazy pupil. They smiled at the fun.

“I’ll remember,” sang out the little lame girl, repeating the lesson, “‘Always use as dry a brush as possible when you’re painting water-color stencils.’ Oh, I know my lesson, teacher!”

“Pay attention!” Jimsi made believe she was frightfully severe. “Now, watch me!” She took the stencil, placed it on top of some white pad paper, passed her brush with the water-color over the stencil openings and drew the stencil off. “There!” she exclaimed, “Isn’t _that_ fun!”

The little lame girl beamed. “Yes,” she agreed. “I’d like to try that—but why can’t you cut out your own patterns—I mean patterns that you make up out of your own head when you want to draw?”

“Well, if you can draw, you _can_. You see the wall paper can be used to make stencils. When I was little Mother showed me how to cut fancy cut-out designs with scissors by folding a square piece of paper over and over and then snipping bits off the edge here and there. That would make a stencil and one could cut one in wall paper like that. All one would need to do would be to paint over the openings after the paper was smoothed out flat.”

“And can you use the painted stencil patterns _for_ anything?” inquired the little lame girl.

“Why—just like embroidery patterns,” said Jimsi. “My teacher at school taught us how to use them. We decorated lots of things like linen hand-bags, pillows and little fancy Christmas gift things. But we used oil paints. With water-color, one can stencil packages of blotters and tie them together for a gift. One can stencil paper picture-frames or letter-paper, I should think—oh, most everything.”

“The design you have there’s too big for letter paper,” Joyce objected. “Where can one find a small enough stencil for _that_?”

“Why, take the tulip right in the center!” laughed Jimsi.

Of course! Oh, what fun!

They tried it with some sheets of the little lame girl’s letter-paper and it was ever so pretty! And it really took no time to paint it. Hooray!

“Let’s write the crow a letter with a stencil at the top,” suggested Jimsi.

“And put your pattern in,” went on Joyce. “The one you were going to give your Aunt Phoebe.”

“Let’s write a round-robin letter: you write one sentence and then I’ll write the next!”

So they began:

“DEAR GOOD CROW:

We both found something new in our Magic Books to-day.
It was Joyce who thought of it. But Jimsi carried it
further than just the embroidery patterns.

Joyce found embroidery designs that could be traced on
linen or cloth. Jimsi decorated this letter-paper with
the stencil she cut with wall paper.

The embroidery pattern we are sending you is from us
both and came from Joyce’s Magic Book.

We send you lots of love,

Your friends,
_Joyce and Jimsi._”

Joyce addressed the envelope. Jimsi drew a crow stamp up in the corner. There never could be a real crow letter without a stamp in the corner—a stamp of a black bird with a letter in his bill.

“I’ve only a few minutes before lunch,” announced Jimsi, glancing at the clock. “I won’t wait for Cinderella’s number to strike. I’ll run along and then I’ll have a chance to put this under Aunt Phoebe’s plate before she comes to the table. Good-bye, dearest! I’m so glad you discovered the stencils and the patterns.”

“No, _you_ discovered the stencils and I discovered the patterns.”

“Well, crow will be pleased, won’t he?”

“Won’t he!”

“I wonder if crow knew there were patterns for embroidery in wall paper?”

“I wonder!”

And then Jimsi tore herself away from her friend and flung on her cloak and cap. The clock in the little lame girl’s room was just striking the hour of twelve—the hour when Cinderella had to give up her ball and run home at night, the hour when Jimsi had to give up her play and run home in the morning. She lifted her rubber in one hand and waved it before she put it on. “Cinderella’s slipper,” she smiled. “But it’s not made of glass and it isn’t going to fall off and be left for anybody to pick up!” Then she was gone.