Read Online Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park - Free Book Online Page A

that wasn't even an inch long.
    Satin stitch was the most important of all the stitches, because you used it to fill in spaces. Which meant that
most
of the stitches you put in to make a picture were satin stitches. Satin stitch was more fun in one way because you got to take bigger stitches. But it also had its bad side: I had to be sure to pull the thread through
exactly
right. Too tight and the fabric would bunch up underneath. Too loose and the stitch would sag.
    At the beginning I'd ask my mom to check my work. She thought I was doing pretty well, but she always pointed out little mistakes—my stitches weren't exactly the same size, or I hadn't lined them up perfectly. "Anyone can stick a needle in and out," she said. "If you want to get really good at embroidery, it's the little things that count. Because all those little things go together, to make the big picture."
    Embroidering for me was mostly un-embroidering. I'd take five stitches, look at my work, turn it over, and look at the other side—and I'd have to pick out the last two and do them over. But the funny thing was, I didn't really mind.
    It was weird, because normally I hated having to do things over. I hated having to rewrite a homework assignment. Or when I was younger and the Snotbrain-Maelstrom trashed something I'd built and I had to make it again.
    It was different with embroidery. I got so it would bug me when a stitch wasn't just right, and I was
glad
to take it out and fix it.
    When I wasn't embroidering, I was drawing little sketches. I was trying to decide what my embroidery project would be—what I would stitch once I had our very own homemade silk thread.
    I was in my room before bed one night sketching. My mom's embroidered flowers were so pretty—maybe I should do flowers. I drew a flower, five petals on top of a stem.
    Bo-o-o-ring.
    I tried drawing more flowers—rose, daffodil, tulip. Still boring. I went back to the five-petaled flower and drew it a few more times, making the petals different shapes. Round in one sketch, then oval, then long and skinny, then triangles ... That one looked sort of like a star.
    I guess thinking about the star distracted me, because then I started drawing stars. The kind where your pencil never leaves the paper.
    Then I tried drawing just the outline, without any of those inside lines. Much harder. I drew four of them in a row, all lopsided.
    I started to draw another one, and for some reason—maybe because I'd drawn them all in a row—I wondered how many stars were in each row on the American flag. Not something I was going to look up, but maybe the next time I saw a flag...
    Flag?
    Flag!
    That was how I could make the project more American! I could use the thread we made to embroider an American flag!
    I jumped off my bed and ran to find my mom. She was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth.
    "Mom, after we make the thread, could we dye it? I need three colors—wait, the thread will already be white, right? So really I only need two—red and blue. I want to embroider an American flag—do they sell the kind of dye we'd need? Like, the stuff you use for tie-dyeing? I don't think it would be that hard—"
    Sheesh. I sounded like Patrick when he gets excited. I saw my mom's face in the mirror, her mouth full of white foam.
    "Jush a minute," she said. She spat and rinsed and put her toothbrush away. Then she turned to face me. "I'm sure dyeing the thread is possible, but I don't have any experience with that. My grandmother just made the thread, then she sent it off somewhere to get dyed and made into cloth, so we never did that part."
    "Oh." I thought for a second. "But that doesn't mean we couldn't try."
    "No, but there's something else. An American flag would be really difficult to embroider, especially if you want to make it a good size."
    "I was thinking, like half a piece of paper, that size?" I said.
    "Okay. The stripes are basically long skinny rectangles, right?" My