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Jecca knew she wanted the pincushion so she pushed it to her. “I heard something about Mr. Wingate.”
“Me too,” Lucy said. “Not that Livie ever told me a word about him, but Armstrong’s—that’s the local grocery—is a hotbed of gossip. He was an uptight old man, quite a bit older than Livie. He was constantly aware of what he called his ‘social status’ and demanded that his young wife live up to it.”
“No pole dancing?”
Lucy smiled. “He must be turning over in his grave. Good!” When she reached across the counter for her rotary cutter, Jecca picked it up. “Would you like for me to cut that for you?”
“Can you do that?”
“Are you kidding? I’m from generations of hardware store owners. They haven’t made a hand tool I can’t use.”
“How wonderful! If you’ll cut those, I’ll put on the ruffler.”
“What’s that?” Jecca asked.
Lucy held up an intricate-looking metal object the size of a bar of soap. “It pleats fabric.”
“This I have to see,” Jecca said, and Lucy demonstrated. When Jecca was in high school and making her own clothes, to make the pleats, she’d had to mark them, pin them, fold the pins to each other, press, baste, then sew. The little machine attachment did it all as fast as Lucy fed it through. “Magic!”
Jecca turned to look around the room at all the machines. “So what do all these things actually do?” she asked.
By the time Lucy had demonstrated the Baby Lock Evolution serger and the way it not only sewed a seam but also trimmed it, it was time for lunch. She and Lucy went downstairs, made sandwiches, and took them upstairs to look at the Sashiko machine.
Jecca ate and listened to Lucy’s history of Japanese quilting—for which the machine was named—then saw that it had only a bobbin, no upper thread. This meant there was a blank space between stitches that gave them the appearance of being hand sewn.
“In my world hand is a four-letter word,” Lucy said, and Jecca laughed.
There was a huge machine on a cabinet along the far wall. It was for embroidery, and Lucy spent nearly an hour showing Jecca software where she could take any photo, drawing, or painting, and reproduce it at any size in colors of thread.
“Amazing,” Jecca said as she thought of the possibilities of what could be done. She’d studied fiber arts in school, but it had been the basic ceeno each ots with a four-harness loom. As with most art schools, it was believed that a student should learn from the bottom up.
Jecca said, “If our fiber arts teacher wanted to use a sewing machine, it would be with a treadle. He didn’t like anything electric.”
“And that brings us to Henry,” Lucy said and she sounded as though she was speaking of a lover.
She went to the center cabinet to a huge sewing machine with a computer screen built into the arm. It was a Bernina 830. Lucy caressed the top. “When I first bought this guy I had so much trouble with him, I named him Henry. Only a man can cause a woman that much agony.”
Jecca laughed. “But it looks like you two have come to terms.”
“The first year was difficult. I hauled all fifty-eight pounds of him back to the shop eight times. I was sure he was defective. He’s just precise. If he’s threaded correctly, has the right foot, the right needle, and his tensions above and below are correct, Henry can perform miracles. Want to see my feet?”
Jecca didn’t know what she meant until Lucy opened a drawer to show her forty-two different presser feet for the sewing machine. “What in the world do they all do?” she asked.
“Well,” Lucy began as she pulled out a bolt of muslin and cut off a half a yard, “this one is a tailor tack foot, and besides doing what it was designed for, it makes tiny fringe.” She demonstrated. As Jecca was marveling over the row of fringe, Lucy said, “And these are for pintucking. They—”
“What is pintucking?”
While Lucy was showing the use of a double needle and inserting a strand of pearl cotton in the ridge created by the needles, an alarm went off.
“Time for exercise,” Lucy said.
“It’s three already?”
“It is,” Lucy said and gave a wistful look at the pile of fabric on her big cutting table. Because of spending the afternoon with Jecca, she was even farther behind in her work.
“If today’s workout doesn’t kill me, afterward I’ll help you,” Jecca said.
“Would you?” Lucy asked. “I’d love the help, but the company would be even more welcome. There are only so many movies a person can watch.”
