3296. Highfalutin sewing machine © Bruce Goodman 13 August 2025

For years Julie-Rose had sewn clothes for herself and her kids. The kids were now all grown up with families of their own. These days she had plenty of opportunity to sew clothes for her grandchildren. The trouble was, both the fabric pattern and the clothing design were no longer “state of the art”. One of her sons came up with a plan: the six children would pull together and get their mother one of those highfalutin sewing machines that could scan a picture like a computer and embroider the picture perfectly on the fabric. Of course it didn’t happen automatically. The user had to develop skills to make an acceptable embroidered item. On her sixty-fifth birthday Julie-Rose was over the moon. She learnt to create T-shirts with the grandchildren’s heroes embroidered on them. She even put the family pet dog on the pocket of wee Mervin’s jacket. And then one day something strange began to happen. The sewing machine seemed to take no notice of the picture she was trying to create. There was embroidered the unclear outline of a figure. The next time she tried to sew the outline had more detail. She made several further attempts and each time the picture became clearer. In the end she could recognize what it was; it was a picture of Mary-Lee, her sister who lived in far-away upstate New York. She hadn’t seen her for years although they phoned for birthdays and Christmas. Mary-Lee always sounded so negative. She asked her children if they had scanned a photo of Aunt Mary-Lee on the sewing machine. No, they hadn’t. And then the phone rang. Aunt Mary-Lee had been murdered two days earlier. The next time Julie-Rose used the machine it wove a perfect picture of Mary-Lee’s husband holding a carving knife. Contact Author Back to Index Next Story Previous Story