JOY ALONG THE WAY: MOTHER ASSIGNS ARTWORK FOR HOT SUMMER DAYS

"Now for your First-Day-of-School dresses, we're going to trim them with soutache braid," Mama told her eight and ten year old girls, Lou and me.

"Soo what?" we asked in unison, big eyed and alert.

"Soutache," Mama repeated. "S-O-O-T-A-S-H."

She didn't spell it right but how did we know or care? We sensed something new.

Mama went on to explain that soutache braid was narrow, sturdily and closely woven in a herringbone pattern. Whatever that was. "I'll make your dresses with big, square-cornered collars in the back like your middy blouses have. You can draw a pattern of anything you want to trim your collars. I'll sew the braid over your patterns."

Mama never had any lessons in parenting. She and her peers would have laughed at the concept. She intuitively knew that in the hot, listless dog days of summer when green scum formed on still waters and insect fiddlers and wing scratchers made the nights vibrate, her girls needed something to keep them interested and perhaps, hone some skill.

Mama brought home from Langson's Store a package of the braid to show us what we would be working with. "Keep in mind the pattern should be something that wouldn't require cutting the braid very much. Even the best attempts at sewing the cut ends down, they will get fuzzy in the washings. And keep the drawing as continuous as you can." She showed us how to draw a daisy without taking the pencil up with every petal.

It was a memorable stretch of dog days. After learning the dimensions of the collar back we used every little bit of scrap paper we could find upon which to make our drawings, discarded them almost hourly. I drew a star at first but quickly discarded that. Everybody's middy collars had stars in the corners. I tried acorns, shamrocks, maple leaves. Every day a new pattern, almost every hour. Since mama had said a continuous pattern would be best and since my last name had two l's in it at which I was pretty good at make them the same height, I thought a continuos row of l's would be suitable. Lou, keeping the continuous pattern in mind, drew a fat, slithering snake to go across the bottom of her collar. "Where the braid comes together at the mouth and may fray, that could be the forked tongue," she explained. "French knots for the eye and nose-slit." Mama and I recoiled at the idea so Lou eventually came up with something not quite so frightful.

The collars were to be made of sturdy Indianhead linen, any color we chose that was available. The braid was only available in black or navy blue. I chose powder blue cloth. Lou liked the more dashing salmon color.

I did kittens sitting on a rail, their tails hanging down, no two the same length, and cedar trees, pond lilies, train boxcars. Lou did corn shocks, pitchforks, roosters. When she studied the border on the front cover of our Book of Knowledge, she was sure that was going to be her final pattern. But the loopings and crossovers were just too intricate for her to follow. She finally chose a row of fern fronds. I chose butterflies. The finished collars were beautiful in our opinion.

Off we went to school just knowing we and our soutaches trimmed collars would be the center of attention and admiration. Alas, Orvetta McFarland's mother had used soutache braid too. Furthermore, the design was a sunset scene. The sun, appliqud gold cloth on blue linen was half way down and alternate long and short soutache rays radiated upward to cover the whole collar. We appreciated the pattern even though ours got little attention.

"Shoot," Lou said on the way home. "I wish I had kept that snake."

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.