“Let’s try it,” Jimsi urged. “You start the doily and I’ll make the bow-thing in a pattern for Caw Caw to send Aunt Phoebe. Then I want to try stencils.”
They were both silently busy for a long time. Joyce transferred her design to a piece of white linen that her mother had given her. Jimsi labored over the neck-bow pattern that she wanted to send Aunt Phoebe in a crow letter. She copied her design on a sheet of white pad paper.
“What color shall I use to outline my design?” suddenly inquired Joyce. “It could be almost any color.”
“Why most any color,” thought Jimsi. “How about white or blue?”
“We have blue china,” mused Joyce. “I’ll do it in blue. Do you know, if I wanted to, I’d turn it into a top to put on a square pin-cushion—_I could_!”
The two little girls laughed. Oh, the Magic Book was proving very magic indeed! _Very magic!_
“Now, while you sew, I’m going to try stencils and see if I can make them out of wall paper designs. _I_ think I can! Stencils are ever so easy to use. They’re splendid fun, if you like to paint.”
So Jimsi took a piece of the paper that she found in the little lame girl’s Magic Book. “It’s queer paper,” she mused, “all glossy. I think it must be the kind they use in papering kitchens and bath-rooms. It’s stiff and exactly right for stencil-cutting. You know there’s a special knife that comes to use for cutting stencils but I’m using scissors. I think this doesn’t need a knife. It’s easy to cut with scissors if you leave the edges clean-cut. I’m leaving the paper and _only_ cutting out the form of the design.”
All the eight squares in the wall paper pattern, Jimsi cut carefully out. Next, she cut around the edge of the tulip-flower that was in the center of the pattern design. And she cut out the tulip leaves, too. “This is _number four_,” she laughed. “Hooray! It’s done! Now tell me where your paints are and I’ll show _you_ something!”
The paints were in the big table drawer and Jimsi went to fetch water. She asked for a bit of blotter and the little lame girl told her where to find it.
“You have to dry your paint brush on the blotter before painting stencil designs,” explained Jimsi, “otherwise the paint runs all over. Always use a dry brush—I mean as dry as will paint!” She shook her brush at Joyce as if she were a teacher at school with a pencil trying to drum a lesson into a lazy pupil. They smiled at the fun.