Once upon a time there lived a lonely little girl named Lucy who spent her days cooped up in her grandmother’s sewing room.

Lucy went to live with her grandmother out in the countryside after her parents died in a horrible automobile accident. The nearest neighbors were a mile away and the nearest neighbors with children lived at least three miles away. After Lucy’s mother was killed, Lucy’s grandmother mourned the death of her daughter so much that she sold her own car. Just the thought of seeing another automobile sickened her. 

Consequently, Lucy walked to the only place she ever went outside of her grandmother’s house: school, which was only half a mile away. But Lucy never bothered to walk to her neighbors’ houses. They were simply too far away. Besides, Lucy was content sewing and playing with her dolls.

“I don’t need friends, at least not real human friends,” Lucy told herself. What she wouldn’t admit, though, was that she was afraid that if she made human friends, she would grow attached to them, only for them to later die, maybe in an automobile accident, maybe not. But Lucy wasn’t going to risk it. She didn’t want to lose someone else.

Because Lucy often thought about her parents’ death, she was usually quite sad but she did her best to distract herself by pouring over her sewing projects. Lucy sewed everything from teddy bear clothes to bonnets and booties for her grandmother’s stuffed cat to small wall hangings. 

But most of all Lucy loved to embroider doll-sized tablecloths to lay over her doll’s table when she held tea parties. Her tablecloths depicted everything from farm animals to flowers to Christmas themes. 

Lucy liked to decorate her tablecloths with scenes she saw in the world around her as well as with scenes running through her head. Lucy had a big imagination and enjoyed observing the things happening in her neighborhood, even though she rarely left her grandmother’s house. As often as possible, Lucy would watch the outside world from the window in her grandmother’s sewing room. She wanted to bring the outside world to her dolls. After all, they never saw it.

Lucy was afraid to bring her dolls outside to the playground or even to the front yard of her grandmother’s house because she didn’t want to get them dirty. She was very protective of her dolls, especially their dainty dresses, which she sewed herself. Lucy was quite proud of everything she sewed and didn’t want to get any of it ruined. To protect her tablecloths, she stored them in a wooden chest under her grandmother’s sewing table.

One day while playing in her grandmother’s sewing room, Lucy heard a soft sound, like the scurrying of tiny feet. Pit, pat, pit, pat.

“I guess Grandma has mice in the house,” Lucy told herself. “I guess I’ll tell her when she comes back from the grocery store.”

She ignored the sounds and continued sewing. She was using a very special type of thread that day---turquoise silk---that her grandmother had given her recently for her birthday. Happily, Lucy embroidered a series of baby whales. They were cute and chubby with big eyes. Lucy loved embroidering adorable things that would make her smile.

As Lucy sewed, the pitter-pattering continued and yet she still ignored it. She pretended it wasn’t there right up until something crashed.

“Hey! What was that?”

Lucy put down her needle and thread and walked over to where she had heard the sound. It seemed like it came from the bathroom. Indeed it had! When she entered the room, she saw her grandmother’s toiletry basket on the floor, with all of its contents rolling around. Lucy tsked and started to pick up the shampoos and lotion bottles.

“Silly mice,” she whispered, “knocking things over.”

Then another crash erupted.

“What? Again?”

Lucy left the rest of the shampoo bottles on the floor and scurried over to the living room. 

The mice had knocked over her grandmother’s vase! It had shattered into a thousand pieces and the violets it once held now had broken stems and missing petals. The room smelled like flower water.

Lucy had just entered the kitchen for the broom when she heard yet another crash. And this time it came from the sewing room.

Lucy raced over only to immediately stop in the sewing room’s doorway. Standing right in front of her were all of the creatures she had ever embroidered on her dolls’ tablecloths. A whole army of colorful animals and flowers had invaded the room. Even the baby whales she had begun embroidering that morning were out and about. Some of the creatures were dancing, others were rummaging through the bags and boxes piled up on the desk and on shelves. Lucy was delighted up until she saw two giraffes unrolling her spool of turquoise thread.

“Hey!” Lucy shouted, “That’s my birthday present!” She darted over to the two tiny animals and pushed them away. Once she seized the spool, the girl yelled again, “Everybody stop what you’re doing! This is my grandma’s house and where I live! I want to know what’s going on!”

Suddenly, every roaring lion, chattering bird, noisy dog, and bellowing dragon fell silent. The whole room fell silent. Then one palm-sized peacock stepped forward.

“We’ve come for you, Lucy. We’ve come to show you and your dolls the world---our world.”

Lucy very quickly responded, “But I know the world. I can see it from my bedroom window or the window in my grandma’s sewing room. I go out into the world when I go to school. And my dolls know the world, too. I bring it to them by—by…making you.” She pointed to all of the creatures she had embroidered.

“True,” the peacock replied, ”But you don’t know our world. And as our creator, don’t you think you should?”

“You’re not making sense! Of course I know your world---I made your world! Without me, you and your world wouldn’t exist!”

“Oh, Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. You only made our night world of sleep, the place where we go to rest. But you didn’t make our day world, the place where we go to have fun.”

“What? I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Lucy told the peacock. She was getting impatient. She hated being confused.

“I mean,” the little peacock explained, “that you pulled us from your imagination to embroider onto your tablecloths, but we can’t stay there all the time. Nobody wants to sleep for his whole life. So, when we get bored of the tablecloths, we escape to this other place, this place where all embroidered creatures go. We want you to see it.”

Lucy gulped. “Is it far?”

All the creatures shook their heads.

“Is it scary?”

Again, the creatures shook their heads.

Lucy paused. “Will I be back by the time my grandma comes home?”

“If you want,” the peacock said, “we can arrange for that.”

“Then…that sounds very nice. I want to go. I want to visit this place. How do I go there?”

The peacock began to speak when a little tiger pushed him aside and told him, “It’s my turn. You’ve said enough.” Then the tiger looked up at Lucy and said, ”If you want to come to our day world, you have to pick out your favorite spool of thread and clench it in your hand and say ‘Threads and needles’ three times.”

“Will that really work? Is it really that easy?” Lucy asked.

“Yes,” replied the little tiger.

Lucy surveyed the sewing room and then picked up the spool of turquoise silk. She squeezed it tightly in her hand and chanted, “Threads and needles, threads and needles, threads and needles!”

But nothing happened. The creatures all gasped.

“Hey!” Lucy whined to the tiger, “You lied!”

“No, I didn’t,” the tiger said, “I just forgot to tell you the most important part. You must close your eyes.”

There was a collective “Phew!” from the creatures. They really wanted Lucy to visit their world.

Lucy repeated the process, this time closing her eyes as the tiger instructed. And suddenly Lucy was in a place other than where she had been before.

In the world of thread and needles, there were pincushions and giant sewing machines everywhere. Rolls of every fabric imaginable were stacked up to form city gates. Buttons hang in the trees instead of fruit and there was one giant sewing basket in the center of it all, like a town plaza. Other cloth creatures, like the ones she had embroidered strolled along the streets and in and out of felt stores and houses. Everywhere, the tune from some massive music box filled the air.

It was enchanting.

Lucy ran around observing everything. She wanted to see and smell and touch all that she could…so she did. 

She rubbed her hands along all the silk. She sniffed the rolls of fresh cotton. She did summersaults and flips on the fleece blankets that formed pastures for embroidered cows. She left nothing unexplored. Her eyes, nose, and fingers took in every inch that they could.

Lucy’s entire line of embroidered creatures followed after her as she sped from one point to the next. Anyone watching from a distance would have spotted a skipping girl with a long parade of colorful creatures, ranging from seagulls to rabbits to snails to moose.

After she had seen every part of this strange thread and needle world, Lucy insisted on going around again. But the palm-sized peacock allow it. 

“You said you needed to get back home by the time your grandmother returned from the grocery store---and the teddy bears you made and placed in her sewing room said she pulled into the driveway just now. You know what that means.”

“No!” cried Lucy, “That isn’t fair. I can’t leave now! I only just got here.”

“If you don’t return now, your grandmother will notice that you’re missing  and she’ll get worried. After all the strife your parents’ death has given her, do you really want her to worry anymore?”

Lucy agreed with the peacock and asked how to get back home.

The little tiger piped up, “Pick your favorite spool of thread from this place and squeeze it in your hand, like you did before. Only this time you must say ‘Home, home, home.’”

Lucy glanced around, trying to remember where her favorite spool of thread had been. It was an emerald-colored silk spool. When she couldn’t find it, she started to panic. 

“Does it have to be my favorite spool of thread?” Lucy practically shrieked. “Can’t it be any old one?”

“No,” the creatures all said in unison, rather firmly, “it must be your favorite.”

Lucy groaned out of frustration. “Quick, everybody! Please help me find the emerald silk spool!”

The creatures immediately dispersed. They searched high and slow but there were just so many spools of thread: magenta, violet, burnt orange, bright red, golden yellow, dark brown, indigo, plain white, deep pink…

“I found it!” yelped a Scottie dog. He took it in his mouth and bounded over to Lucy.

“Excellent! Thank you!” Lucy clenched the spool in her hand and repeated “Home” three times. And in less than a second, she was there.

She appeared in the sewing room, right where she had been before. Her doll’s tablecloth full of whales sat before her and her spool of emerald silk sat in her right hand.