A Tangled Thread Page 3

  Jan, who often made extra time to help Zoey with fabric selections and sewing problems, made a beeline toward them.

  “Welcome, Zoey and Lulu . . . and Buttons! What can I help you with today?”

  Jan was wearing two scarves, one a green print and one a blue, twisted together around her waist as a belt. Zoey loved it and decided she would try that herself.

  Zoey explained about the soccer dinner for her friend Kate and that Kate was someone who usually didn’t wear particularly girly clothes.

  “Well,” said Jan, “since you’ve got a little extra fabric money today, I’d try some of these higher-quality knits here. They’re stretchy, practical, and extremely soft, which sounds like something your friend would be comfortable in.”

  Zoey began flipping through the fabrics on the rack and immediately fell in love with one of the knits that had a swirly print on it. It reminded her a bit of spaghetti, but in a fashion-y way. It was totally gorgeous! She’d never used a fabric quite that stretchy for clothing before, only for accessories, but something about it spoke to her, and she knew she wanted it for Kate’s dress.

  Lulu and Jan completely agreed with the fabric choice, and with business out of the way, Zoey was free to spend time just browsing all the beautiful things at the store. Jan even brought out some doggie treats and a bowl of water for Buttons. It was a perfect way to end the day.

  At home that night, Zoey took out the fabric she’d purchased for Kate’s dress and laid it out as inspiration. Then she began working in earnest on a sketch. Kate was lucky to have a figure that would look good in pretty much anything, but Zoey wanted to do more than just make Kate look good. She wanted to design a dress that Kate would love! Kate had dutifully worn things her mom had picked out for her for years, things she didn’t really like, and now was her chance to wear something more her.

  Zoey’s phone buzzed, and she hastily grabbed it to see who it was. It was another e-mail from Etsy! She’d made another sale!

  Relief flowed through her as she clicked through the e-mail alert and saw the name of the buyer. She didn’t recognize it. A stranger had found her accessories site and bought something. A stranger had liked one of her designs! Now she had to plan to get the order out as quickly as possible, since she had a lot of work to do designing for her friends. She turned back to her sketches for Kate, feeling like maybe, just maybe, she’d bitten off a little more than she could chew by offering to design and sew two dresses in less than two weeks and manage her new Etsy store. What have I gotten myself into? Zoey thought.

  She took a deep breath and thought back to the advice she had given to Priti not so long ago, when Priti was overwhelmed. Zoey had said to take it one stitch at a time, and now she decided to do just that. Since the mail wouldn’t go out until the next day, anyway, she decided to package the order later and focus on Kate’s dress.

  Besides, Zoey thought, Dad always says that there’s busy, and there’s good busy. And this is definitely good busy!

  Surveying her sketches critically, Zoey decided Kate really looked best in more simple designs and would probably be most comfortable in something basic as well, so the best way to go for her would be to make a dress with a basic T-shirt–like top and use the beautiful swirly knit fabric to make an attached tulip skirt. The bit of poof in the skirt would be girly, but not too girly, for sporty Kate. And her mom would like it because tulip skirts were feminine and fun.

  Zoey added some finishing touches to the sketch, certain she’d found the right balance for Kate, and then climbed into bed to do her homework.

  If only my homework were designing clothes! Zoey thought. I wouldn’t mind doing it at all. . . . In fact, I’d probably turn in extra credit every week!

  CHAPTER 4

  Spaghetti, Anyone?

  As if things weren’t interesting enough around here making a sari for my friend Priti, now I’m also designing a dress for my wonderful friend Kate to wear to her soccer team’s end-of-season celebration! It’s a spaghetti dinner, and I found this amazing knit fabric with a swirly pattern on it that reminds me of spaghetti. Do you like the sketch for her dress? Only the skirt part will be in the swirly fabric, and the top will be T-shirty and sporty, just like Kate. I think it’s even girly enough to make her mom happy!

  I’ve had a few sales come through Etsy, so I wanted to say thank you to my readers for their support! I hope everyone loves their accessories as much as I love the AMAAAAAAAZING bag of sari fabrics Priti dropped off earlier for me to use. I opened the bag, and so much color spilled out, it was like being inside a giant bag of Skittles candies. I’m playing with them now, wrapping them around myself to see how constructing this sari will work. I’m even considering taking two fabrics and twisting or sewing them together to make something really unique, like the fantastic two-scarves belt I saw my friend Jan wearing the other day. . . . Stay tuned!

  Zoey set herself up at the dining room table with her sewing machine, sketch pad, patterns, and fabric. It was the only place in the house where she could really spread out, and when she had a big project to sew, the dining room became her office. Luckily, her brother and father didn’t much care about eating in the dining room and were happy to let Zoey take it over whenever she needed to. With her Etsy store inventory and mailing supplies spread out around the room, it was starting to feel like her very own design studio.

  Zoey had made a pretty simple pattern for Kate’s dress by combining store-bought shirt and skirt patterns, so she decided to start that dress first. She turned on her sewing machine and began laying out pieces of the pattern over the fabric, so she could start cutting. She always found this part slow and tricky, because pinning the pattern on the fabric properly took a lot of patience, and Jan had told her time and time again to measure twice and cut once. The fabric she’d bought for Kate was expensive, and she hadn’t bought enough yards to cover any huge mistakes. Even though she had a larger fabric budget than usual, she didn’t want to waste it. So she’d have to go slowly and carefully.

  When she finished cutting all the pieces, she pinned them again, so that she’d have guidelines for sewing. When she’d pinned the skirt of the dress, and checked it for any wrinkles or unevenness, she slid what would be the bottom hem of the dress under the feed dog of the machine and placed her foot on the pedal.

  Nothing happened. Not a whir, not a buzz, nothing.

  That’s weird, thought Zoey. She checked over all the settings on the machine and noticed it felt warmer than it usually did. In fact, it felt hot. She turned it off, waited a few minutes to let it cool down, then turned it back on. That trick usually worked with her laptop and her phone. Then she lined up her fabric again, crossed her fingers, and put her foot on the pedal. The sewing machine sprang to life and began stitching.

  Zoey heaved a sigh of relief. This was not the time for her mother’s old sewing machine to let her down! They had two big jobs to do!

  Zoey worked for several minutes, until she noticed that the hem wasn’t looking right with the stitches in it. It was pulling as she sewed, and that was distorting the beautiful swirls on the fabric. She decided to stop and try it a few times on scraps of fabric that were left over from cutting. But no matter how slowly she went, the same thing kept happening.

  Zoey was frustrated. She was starting to wonder if it needed to be handled differently. She decided to take a break from Kate’s dress for the moment to work on Priti’s. After all, she had this other whole project to work on.

  She swapped out Kate’s pattern and fabric for Priti’s, and began laying out and cutting the fabric for Priti’s sari. She was thrilled with the sari fabrics she’d chosen to blend together.

  Zoey was just starting to make some good progress when Marcus came in and sat down.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, looking around at Zoey’s piles of sewing things covering every surface.

  “Fine,” said Zoey. “I’m making a sari for Priti. Do you want to see the sketch? It’s right here.”

&
nbsp; “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I meant how’s it going with the Etsy store.”

  Zoey looked up, glad she had good news to tell. “Oh, pretty well. I’ve made a couple of sales! Well, one buyer was Aunt Lulu, but the other buyer is someone I don’t know. Actually, I’d better pack that order up tonight. . . . I almost forgot.” She bit her lip, realizing she also had forgotten that she still had homework to do. Her dad had seen her sewing earlier and asked if she had finished her homework. Zoey had promised him she would get it done, but her sewing had taken a lot longer than she’d planned.

  “That’s great, Zo. And how about Allie?” Marcus asked insistently. “I mean, how’s she doing? You know, with sales and stuff.”

  Zoey looked at him oddly. She’d still been thinking about her homework. “Um, she’s fine, I guess. I haven’t talked to her since the weekend. But she’s probably sold some more stuff too.”

  Marcus nodded. “That’s good. I’m glad. You should have her come over again this weekend. You know, to help you with your orders. Or just to hang out, even.”

  Distracted, Zoey nodded. It was nice Marcus was so interested in her Etsy store, but he clearly didn’t understand how much sewing she had to do! She wouldn’t be able to just “hang out” with anyone for another week, at least.

  To change the subject, she asked, “Hey, did Dad just go out? I heard him yell something, and then the front door closed, but I was concentrating so hard, I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Yeah, he’s going out with a woman he met from work. I think he’s been out with her before. He yelled that he left us money for pizza.”

  Zoey’s eyes lit up. “Pizza! I’m starving! Will you order it? I really want to get more work done on this before I have to start my math homework.” Then she paused. “I’m glad Dad’s . . . met someone nice . . . but it still feels weird, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Marcus replied with a shrug. “But I guess it’s a good thing. Any excuse for pizza is a good thing. I’ll call in the order.”

  Marcus got up and left, leaving Zoey to her work. It was really nice having a brother sometimes. Especially one who liked pizza and ice cream as much as she did and didn’t mind driving her to fabric stores and having a dining room full of fabric and accessories.

  Zoey continued to work on the dresses for the next two days, making only marginal progress. The fabric from Kate’s dress was tricky to sew, and it turned out that tulip skirts required a lot of pinning to get right. The sari Zoey designed had so many layers that it was really time-consuming too. She found herself looking longingly at the headbands she’d made for the Etsy site and thinking about how easy they’d been to make. Maybe it wouldn’t be bad to be a designer who focused exclusively on accessories. . . .

  On Thursday evening, as she was sitting down to sew, her phone rang. Glad for a minute to have something to do besides sew, she answered it.

  “It’s Libby,” said Libby, even though her name appeared on Zoey’s phone when she called.

  “I know,” said Zoey, giggling. “What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” Libby answered. “How are the dresses?”

  Zoey was relieved Libby asked. She’d been starting to worry she’d never, ever be finished, and she needed someone to talk to about it. “Well, do you think Priti or Kate would mind wearing half a dress to their parties? ’Cause that might be all they get!”

  “What?” cried Libby. “Why?”

  “I’m really worried I’m going to let them down, Libby,” Zoey confessed. “Both dresses are turning out to be harder than I thought. Kate might have to wear a tank top with just a skirt! Or maybe a bathing suit as a top.”

  “She’d probably prefer that!” Libby joked.

  Zoey laughed. “You’re right! She would.” She sighed. “But, seriously, time is ticking, and there aren’t many days until Priti leaves for India. And suddenly I’ve got orders coming in from Etsy to deal with, and not only that, I get tons of e-mails every day with questions from people who might want to buy and just want to learn more about each piece. My dad helps, but it takes a while to answer them all too. Some of them want pictures from different angles, all kinds of stuff.”

  “I could help,” Libby offered. “Maybe I could come over this weekend and help you mail things and answer e-mails.”

  “Oh, would you?” Zoey said. “Thanks, Libby, you’re the best!”

  “No problem,” said Libby.

  “I should probably get back to work now,” Zoey said. “But thanks for calling. I owe you another dress too. Once I’ve recovered from these. If I recover.”

  Libby laughed. “You must be okay if you’re making jokes. I don’t need another dress yet—I still love the Libby dress you made for me. I’d wear it every day if I could!”

  “Ha-ha, I dare you. Imagine what Ivy would say if you did!” said Zoey. “Anyway, see you tomorrow.”

  “See you.”

  The next day in social studies class, Zoey was trying to listen and take notes while the back of her brain was working on how to get the fabric for Priti’s dress to stay over the shoulder just so, while being comfortable and easy to take on and off. It was a construction problem, and she didn’t have enough sewing experience yet to do it right. Sometimes it seemed like the more she sewed, the more she needed to learn about sewing.

  She doodled part of Priti’s dress on her notebook, studying it from various perspectives. She still loved the design and didn’t want to change it.

  Suddenly, she heard someone clear her throat very deliberately. Afraid she’d been caught not listening in class, Zoey looked up guiltily and tried to appear like she’d been listening. But it was just Ivy, who was leaning across the aisle and studying Zoey’s little sketch.

  “Designing more outfits for customers that pee and poop in the backyard, Zoey?” she asked. “What’s next? Outfits for squirrels?”

  Before Zoey could even think of a response, her friend Gabe immediately chimed in, “You know, Ivy, most dogs are nicer than you are. I know mine is.”

  Zoey looked at him gratefully as Ivy curled her lip and pulled back to her seat. Gabe was always a good friend to Zoey, helpful and nice. Nicer than a lot of the boys in their grade. And she knew he adored his dog, Mr. Paws, because Gabe kept a picture of him in his locker.

  It’s a good thing Ivy doesn’t know Gabe’s dog is named Mr. Paws, Zoey thought. Or she’d make fun of that too!

  “And so, class,” Mr. Dunn was saying, “if you look at your schedule, you’ll see we have our unit test next Friday, which gives you a full week to study. Make sure you go over all the readings from the unit, as well as the exercises we did in class. This will count twenty-five percent toward your grade.”

  Zoey snapped to attention. Test? What test? She looked at her organizer and saw it written there, just after “Priti goes to India!” and right before “Kate’s spaghetti dinner!” How on earth would she fit studying into her schedule too?

  Zoey was staring gloomily at her day planner when the bell rang and students started to file out of the classroom. Ivy made a soft “woof, woof” sound under her breath as she got up and left, hoping to get a rise out of Zoey, but Zoey didn’t have the energy. Who cared what Ivy thought about her Doggie Duds clothes, anyway? Obviously people liked them, she thought, or they wouldn’t have contributed to the campaign!

  Gabe gathered his books and paused by Zoey’s desk.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You don’t seem like yourself today.”

  Zoey shrugged. “I guess so. I just realized I may have overcommitted myself. . . .”

  “Oh yeah? How?”

  Zoey showed him her calendar and explained about her friends, the dresses, Etsy, and the big test. Just talking about it made her feel a bit jittery.

  “Well,” said Gabe thoughtfully, “which dress needs to be ready first, and which is the most difficult?”

  Zoey hadn’t thought about it that way. “Um, Kate’s is easier, but Priti’s needs
to be ready sooner.”

  Gabe nodded. “I’d finish Kate’s dress first, since it’s simpler, because you’ll feel much better once you get one whole thing out of the way. That’s what my mom always says. Then you focus on the next thing.”

  It was like a lightbulb in Zoey’s brain. She’d been trying to do it all at once and make progress on everything every day. Gabe was right—she needed to follow the advice she had given to Priti. I guess it’s not always easy to follow your own advice, she thought, but he’s right. I think I can do it. “Thanks, Gabe! You’re right. That’s a good idea.”

  Gabe paused for a second, then said, “You know, I could help you study for the social studies test if you want. I mean, since you’re going to be so busy.”

  Gabe really was a nice boy, and Zoey knew it was a good offer.

  “Thanks, Gabe,” she said. “I’ll think about it, okay? But first I’m going to finish Kate’s dress!”

  Feeling reinvigorated, Zoey went home on Friday, ready to attack Kate’s dress. The first thing she did was call Jan at A Stitch in Time to explain the problems she was having with the stretchy knit fabric. Thankfully, Jan knew exactly what to do. She recommended using a zigzag stitch and placing a piece of paper on the top and bottom of the fabric to keep it from stretching while sewing it. She wished Zoey good luck and told her to call her if she had any more questions.

  Zoey decided that from then on, when she was feeling a bit underwater, she needed to tell someone sooner rather than later and to ask for some help!

  Why do I waste so much time spinning my wheels? Zoey thought. I’m surrounded by brilliant people!

  Luckily, Jan’s advice worked like a charm. Now that Zoey understood how to work with the fabric, it wasn’t so challenging. With no homework due the next day because it was the weekend, she was able to get several hours of sewing in that night and then woke up Saturday morning ready to begin again.

  Her father noticed how hard she was working and brought her yummy energy snacks, like celery and peanut butter, to keep her going. Zoey had told him about the big test. When he suggested maybe she was taking on too much sewing and needed to focus on school, Zoey said she felt she could do it, and he said brain food might help.