Strange though it may seem, dragons were once young and this dragon is no exception. I remember a time at my grandparents mill house. The female contingent had just come back from a shopping foray (adding to Nan's embroidery library) and the male contingent had been experimenting with alcohol.
Mum and Nan were not best pleased with the state of the men so off they went to investigate the home brew supplies. They were soon back but not angry. They were laughing their heads off. My Dad and Granddad had relabelled all the barrels.
Between chortles my Nan explained that the damson was now 'Damsons in distress' and the peach had become 'Rocket Fuel'. My Mum then butted in saying that she didn't believe 'Who'd've thought it?' adequately described the blackberry and calling the wheat and raisin 'Winnies Knicker Rotter' was definitely unfair. The adults soon adjourned to the cellar to discuss the rest of the labelling, leaving myself and my brother to amuse ourselves.
After playing with the old cast iron Singer sewing machine in the hall for a while I went off to investigate Nan's embroidery library. Most of this was kept in a big oak cupboard (the shelves made a great ladder) and overflowing with stitch books, design inspiration books, fabric, threads and tools. The books kept me occupied for a while but then I found one on collage.
I had all the equipment I needed to hand paper, fabric, coloured pencils and glue, but best of all I found a really sharp pair of scissors. I liked them from the start. They were small (just the right size for my hands), sharp and had a really interesting animal shape for the handles. All set I started creating a picture of my Nan, cutting and shaping paper and fabric to make the pieces I wanted. Well actually most of the pieces I wanted. I was stuck for the right piece for the lips.
Thinking hard, I wandered round looking for the right thing. In the spare room I spotted it. The curtains were just the right colour. No more thinking, out came the scissors and snip, snip, snip one pair of lips from the middle of the curtains.
Back I went to my collage and started sticking everything together. I knocked the glue over once or twice but wiped the pens and scissors with bits of the collage to get the worst off. No point in wasting glue I thought. Finally it was done. Time to show off my masterpiece.
Proud of my work I marched off to show it to my Nan. They were still in the cellar. Nan looked at it and proceeded to thank me for such lovely work, my Mum on the other hand gave me a hard stare(they're legendary in our family) and left the cellar. I should have stopped her. She was soon back in ogre mode reading me the riot act. Not only had I left glue, paper and fabric pieces lying around the library and cut lips out of the curtains, I had done it with my Nan's best embroidery scissors. Oops. I tried to explain that I'd chosen them because they were sharp. They were exactly what I wanted to make the shapes I'd used. Oh dear! I shouldn't have said that. Apparently it was a smart ass reply and the gist was that I had been very naughty.
Fortunately Nan intervened at this point to give me a talk on the proper use of embroidery scissors. My reasons for chosing them were valid but she wanted to keep them sharp for cutting threads. Fine. I learned a lot from her about different types of scissors that day and I did clean the glue off her scissors up properly. Couldn't do much about the curtains though.
Moral of this tale? If you are going to use your Nan's best
embroidery scissors to cut lips out of curtains DO NOT cover them in glue afterwards!
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Labels: embroidery library, embroidery scissors
