Update: I’m not sure what’s going on with WordPress, but commenting has begun to assign “Anonymous” to some, but not all commenters. Hopefully, the addition of a Name/Email box will help … if not, please let me know by email: lizackert@gmail.com

Having decided to lengthen the sleeves of my smock with patchwork, I set about gathering possible candidates … then serendipitously found some patched strips made for the table cloth cloth project I began last year …

And wouldn’t you know it? The patchwork strips were the perfect length.

So I drew a thread out of each sleeve, said a prayer to the cloth gods, and cut the sleeves in half …

Things moved pretty fast and furious after that, and ended happily with sleeves that were a far better length …

But wait, there’s more.

Some time back, Dee Mallon mentioned that she was starting a new writing group. Having very much admired posts where Dee shared her writing to prompts, it didn’t take but a New York minute for me to send an email asking to be included. And today was the first of ten sessions to come.

Under Dee’s careful guidance we were able to respond to three prompts in two hours. The first one flew off my pen, but the second baffled me. Until I looked across the room at my stitching chair and grabbed on to one word in the prompt …

Scraps

She gathered the pieces around her … rusts and reds, corals and golds. There was a time when she could have named each one: this from a much-loved dress, that from a faraway friend. But there were so many now, the scraps had lost their meanings.

Taking scissors in hand she clipped the edge of a rusty orange linen shot with the colors of a high-desert sky, took hold of one edge, and pulled. The fabric resisting, she clipped another inch, pulling harder, forcing the tear, the cloth releasing a shriek of protest as the linen finally parted.

One after the other she tore them, each cloth yielding strip after strip of forgotten story.

Threading her needle, she set to creating a new meaning for them. A community of cloth.