stitching shadows [t|p]

[The Bearer of Bad News]

Seamstress/Tailor
Rank: "D"
Skill: Skill
Effect: The character with this skill can sew, mend and design clothing.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: The character with this skill can sew, mend and design clothing, bags, and all other apparel designs. He can also do all kinds of embroidery and ornamental work. Look in the Artisan Index for more information. If user has 25 or more Ranks in Rope Use user gains a Synergy Bonus +10 to Seamstress/Tailor. Each time learned user gets 5 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

No bonuses; 0 skill

[0|10]

---

[Soul Split Enter]

Currently unable to enter civilized society to make purchases for reason of an inexplicable aversion, Schatzi Rutherford was passing time with some clothes mending. Typically she remained in the nude, and now was no exception, but she did have a cloak for...well, she wasn't actually sure why. But she'd accidentally torn a hole in it, and it bothered her. She did have some clothes she never wore in a sack, and had used one of her knives to fashion a needle out of a twig. From there she simply needed to shred down her old clothes with the knife so as to have access to the individual strings.

That done, she was able to tie one of the threads to her improvised needle and insert the needle slowly into the top of the tear in her cloak. It was long and wide, and would take a lot of thread to mend well. That was fine, the pants which she was using first due to their khaki tone blending well with the cloak's sandy brown had a lot of material to use since they had been set up to be able to be modified to several different styles of wear.

Pulling the thread through was easy enough, but when she had to push it back in from the inside out on one of the shred's sides she had a bit of trouble with her positioning and wasn't quite able to make it go through. Once she finally did, she had used too much energy in the process and so her arms continued following the path of momentum and she stabbed herself in the eye. That really hurt! She had to use her genetic shapeshifting abilities to lose the eyes altogether in order to shut off the pain receptors, then ring them back so that she could actually see what she was doing.

Not inclined to make the same mistake twice, she pulled some more at the intentionally frayed string of her old pants to get a bit more of the thread out and available for use. Carefully she pulled the thread over to the other side of the cut and inserted the makeshift needle without tightening the ends together. She didn't want to pull everything together and make it look all bunched up. That would look like a total amateur rush job. Well, okay it was kind of exactly that, but whatever. She was allowed to have some pride in her work dammit.

She repeated the overall process a few times, being very careful to keep the flaps of fabric in a position as close to the original as possible. A margin of error was expected, but she wanted it to look as nice as she could. There were gaps between the stitches though, which still made it very clear that the cloth had been severely damaged at some point, and she wasn't entirely certain how she would fix that. For now she just wanted to get everything locked into place though. If her twig needle lost its edge at any point, she just resharpened it until the project was finished. She tied the ends off in knots and cut away the excess weave.

It looked kinda terrible.

[Father 'Suke]

+10 TP
+27 SP
27|125

[The Bearer of Bad News]

[27/125]
[0/10]

With her work completed, Schatzi decided that it needed to be done over. It was no good. No way that it could hold. So if it looked awful anyway, there was no reason not to go for simple security anyway. A patch. That would do nicely. With care, she carved out a long rectangular portion of cloth from her butchered legwear and held it up against the stitched-up hole for a size comparison. Yeah, that would do nicely, make a good patch. Still look like crap though, probably. Maybe she should just buy a new cloak.

But even considering it, she had a sort of sentimental attachment to the thing. After all, through some stroke of fortune it had yet to catch fire while she wore it. Using more of her increasingly devastated leggings as thread she attempted to stitch the patch on over the threads she had already installed. This process was rather faster at first as her makeshift needle went down and in on one side of the cloak and up and out on its reversed face. Eventually she had the angle wrong though and couldn't push the needle through.

She attempted to brute force it, but that only snapped her needle in half. Aggravating, because now she would end up losing some thread which was attached to the back end of her tool because she would have to use her knife to cut it free of the wood that she disposed of. Then she had to whittle a new needle together and tie the rest of her thread back onto that new one. That was a delay to her efforts, particularly the whittling, but nothing extreme nor insurmountable.

The problem now was that the patch was half-sewn. How should she proceed with this now? Well, thankfully the break was on the inner side of the patch, so an idea formed relatively quickly. She tied off the thread which hung in a knot, but left a fair amount of room for what she would try to do. So she inserted a hole going in the appropriate direction as if continuing from the break point and simply continued placing the patch.

When her work was complete she cut off the the from the source and tied it into a knot at the end. Then, part of her cunning plan took shape. She wrapped that knot around the first, and tied them together. It was hideous, amateur work, but it only showed on the inside. The outside looked just like a normal patch. From there she tied off the beginning and end of the project and cut away the remainder of the tread. She would think of a use for all of the scraps later.

[zarak729]

Learned!
Plus 23 SP
Total is 50/125SP

[The Bearer of Bad News]

[50/125]
[0/10]

Sewing shit some more. Sacrifices baby sheep to Anna the Random Number Goddess.

---

So that actually was pretty okay. Still a bit below even the lowest grade professional level, but not bad. Now Schatzi kind of wanted to cobble together something simple from all the remnants, just to see if she could. So she laid out everything she had to work with and considered. What would be really easy to make, which wouldn't require a lot of material? How about...a sock? It didn't get too much simpler than socks really, except mending and patches which were like the basics of the basics.

Trying to sew up a sock from scratch should be similar in theory to knitting, but the execution was certain to be...odd. She tried to think of how this might work exactly, with no prior experience. She made a couple of smallish loops with a line of thread and eyed them. Maybe if she were to reset the second loop so that it was inside the first, like with chain mail armor? That seemed to sort of work, maybe. It was kind of stupid looking though. Next she formed a third loop, hooking it inside the second. Maybe this could go somewhere after all.

She continued to set links of thread within each other, but it was growing increasingly difficult to keep hold of the previous loops. It wasn't as if her fingers were lacking in dexterity, it was just a task that she was unused to, and so it was growing more awkward. Eventually her hand slipped, and everything came apart in a huge chain reaction. She laughed at that one. Chain reaction. With thread chains. She had to laugh or else she might just cry. This was actually somewhat hard.

Perseverance was one of Schatzi Rutherford's good points though, and she just began again from the very beginning. When she had again accumulated enough loops that she just couldn't handle it anymore, she tied off the end and admired her work - one strand that was a couple inches in length and only a few centimeters in width. Hoo boy, this could be a long and painstaking process. That was alright, it wasn't as though she didn't have time, while her other self rested near the Karinui compound.

She set about forming a new set of loops, but this time with the added complication of not only looping the thread into a previous loop, but also trying to fit it into each adjacent loop since she was linking the two chains together. This was even harder, so she had to stabilize and tie it off earlier, having only achieved roughly two-thirds the length of the previous attempt. Who knew socks would be such a pain in the ass?

[zarak729]

Learned!
Plus 18
Total is 68/125 SP

[The Bearer of Bad News]

This was frustrating her, so Schatzi decided a break was in order. Specifically she hid away her little project for later, and dismissed herself, her soul crossing the distance to reunite with its other half.

[Exit by way of technique ending]

[The Bearer of Bad News]

More Sewing

[68/125]
[0/10]

---

[soul split re-enters]

And she was back. Hurrah. Okay, no more putzing around, Schatzi needed to buckle down and actually train here. First thing was first - finishing that sock. She retrieved her supplies, and set up the scenario she had been working with before. At least she had one and two thirds chains of a couple inches long linked together to start with. She retied the thread to her makeshift needle and took a knife to the thing. With her improved knowledge and ability compared to before, she was able to whittle a much more efficient needle - thinner and sharper, so it would slip between the links more easily and not get caught on loose frays.

Once again the shapeshifter painstakingly guided her thread by way of the needle - because trying to be precise with the frayed ends of a string was just an exercise in frustration - through the gaps in the looped chain of fabric. Each time, she had to position the thread so that it formed a loop of its own, and also hold it in that position until she could tie it off. It was a little easier this time because she just wanted a third of the length of the first chain so that she could equalize their lengths.

Once she had an appropriate quantity of links set, she tied it off, cut the string, and reattached a new set. If she was going to wind up in a repeating pattern of two-thirds to one-third, she would need to alternate where the split was, otherwise there would be an unsightly and uncomfortable lumpy line across the thing. That being not desirable, this time she started from the other end when she started up the third link. While the work was starting to go a bit faster as she got used to it, trying to hold all the loops both in place and in shape was still a very awkward proposition, especially the more of them she needed to hold.

Her hands were starting to cramp already, but the first two-thirds of the third chain was coming along quite nicely. She had to admit, if it were just an idle pastime it might almost be enjoyable. But this wasn't a matter of enjoyment now, oh no. This was sheer bloody-minded pride. She had become engaged in a battle of wills and skills, and intended to come out on top. She tied off the current chain and set about finishing it up for the remaining one-third length. In and out and in, the more she did it the easier it got. Aside from holding the links and managing the excess thread anyway. She doubted she would ever have quite the degree of dexterity to find that a simple task.

The end of the third link was coming along rather easily, since there was less she needed to manage at once than there was with its beginning, but her irritated contemplation allowed her to lose focus for just an instant, in which once again she allowed the thread to slip from her grasp and begin to unravel. She was faster this time though, and snatched it back before too much damage could be done. It would mean extra time still, but better to only need to repeat a portion of the work rather than needing to replace all of it.

[She of the Mighty Bow-Gun]

+ 10

Now at 86

[The Bearer of Bad News]

[0/10]
STILL SEWING BWARG

---

Once more unto the breach, as the saying went. Although Schatzi had had a portion of her painstaking progress snatched away by her own very fallible hands, she dutifully continued her knitting. Truth be told it was clear that she was improving. The work continued at a brisker pace now compared to when she had begun a few nights ago. Her technique might even be considered sales-worthy. But it wasn't the work of a master. Not yet. And she intended to settle for nothing less.

Her crochet work proceeded smoothly, as fewer and fewer difficulties presented themselves to her, but that was largely because on the whole this was a simpler work to begin with. It remained probable that were she to take on a more advanced challenge upon the completion of this one, there would be new problems arising to react to. Moreover, the same problems as were being encountered in this simpler project would likely be magnified by the increased difficulty overall.

She was settling into a rhythm now, loops and rings of woolen strings folding in and around themselves, fraying and tearing and mending and tying. Already she had devised a few techniques with which to work on this task, each to resolve their own types of malfunction. Some were repair jobs, fixing damage done as she sought to now complete the finished product in a timely fashion, or else reinforcing it against future damage. Others were rush orders, seeking to accelerate her work to new levels.

There was a balance to be struck, and a careful one. If damage grew too severe to repair, the work itself would be of a lesser quality, an unacceptable quality. Trading potential durability for completing it sooner could potentially lead to this sort of problem. On the other hand, focusing solely on repairs and prevention was excessively slow, and she was on a self-imposed timeline now. This sock would have to be finished within the next few minutes or she would have to consider it a failure and try again.

So focusing solely on one aspect of crafting was a poor decision. Instead she would have to situationally respond to the matter at hand as it arose before her. And in the meantime, spending a little chakra to accelerate the pace of deftness of her hands never hurt. When a problem arose, she would have to consider her progress against the condition of the materials and make her decision on how best to react quickly, lest the issue magnify and critically reduce both factors at once, which would be nothing short of a disaster.

[The Bearer of Bad News]

??/10

EVEN MOAR SEWING [just as a reminder, in the happy circumstance that both of these are 10-worthy, skills ARE consecutively trainable between grades now]

---

Having just countered a negative reaction while attempting to earn experience within her craft by sacrificing a degree of durability, she immediately poured some of her chakra into reinforcing the product back to its former condition. She could have traded progress by backtracking it, or success rate with a risky maneuver, but she had so much chakra to burn that it didn't matter. The only reason she traded durability in the first place was because that particular issue couldn't be solved with chakra.

Once it was back to where she needed it to be, her chakra instead went back to hastening the rate of movement in her hands as she crafted loop and whorl of wool in an effort to adorn her near-finished stocking with a delightful ocean pattern. Maybe she would embroider a fish onto it. A really big fish, the kind that were delicious whether grilled, fried, baked, broiled, or raw. Embroidery was a new trick to her actually, something she had only just figured out, but she was already putting it to use.

Another issue arose to react to, her stitching was beginning to catch on itself, and she didn't notice in time. Her wooden needle snapped, ruining a good deal of fabric at the same time as sending a large splinter to impale her in the throat. It hurt, but mostly only enough to be annoying. Were she a normal human, it was possible that would be lethal, but Schatzi didn't even bleed from her injury as she removed the offending wooden shard and tossed it aside with a grunt of disgust. How was she supposed to do the work of a master without the proper tools? It didn't matter, she'd make do or lose to that man. She didn't intend to lose.

Replacing her needle didn't take long. She'd gone through so many that crafting them was almost a secondary skill in and of itself. But looking upon her torn handiwork, she felt frustrated, even stymied. That was a lot of progress lost, and the material itself was heavily damaged. For now, she would have to concentrate on restoring durability even at the cost of further progress. Mending the tiny threads of each fray wasn't a simple task in itself, and consumed both time and power. It was tiring work, and she had to wipe the sweat of her brow away from her eyes to continue.

But even so, she could feel confident that things would be coming to a close soon. When her material was back into a workable condition she focused on regaining some of her lost progression. It wasn't in pristine condition, but for now it was good enough. She would redirect her efforts once she was back where she had been before the snag. After that, she would focus on returning the project's condition to pristine, perhaps with a durability buffer in place, and then balance progress with durability until something crazy happened again or she was finished.

[The Bearer of Bad News]

??/10

might as well keep going. nothing better to do.

---

Schatzi was back in the game and crafting like a professional now. She was deftly alternating between shaping her threads with cautious haste and refining the frayed ends with a slower deliberation. It seemed to be working quite well honestly, but as she had already learned, when working with a tradecraft disaster could strike at any moment without warning, and then you would lose progress, quality, or even endanger your very life and limb. Well the last part wasn't really anything she had to worry about.

Even so, her work was now starting to turn out with a beauty that went unrivaled by anything she had previously worked on. Truly stunning work, this stocking, showing a glimmering sheen in multiple colors somehow in spite of being made only of simple white wool. Even she wasn't sure how she had managed such a feat, but it did fill her with a sense of pride. Next to this, a silken shirt would be no challenge at all. That was the smug thought process she was operating under.

It was also a terribly flawed one, but she couldn't begin to recognize that fact. Arrogance was in her nature, and anything which fed into that pushed aside all other circumstances, like the dreadful fray that had slipped her notice for the past several seconds now, threatening to undo a critical seam. By the time she spotted it, it was almost too late to react. By the time she had determined the best approach to repairing it, it was too late to react.

The binding connective threads fell apart within her grasp, costing her precious time that she would need to make up for once she had repaired her error. This was not going to be simple though, as this particular seam was a three way intersection between multiple key threads, all of which were beginning to break apart as she scrambled to undo the mistakes she had already begun to compound. Even as true mastery inched closer she was apparently far from infallible. It was a sobering thought.

Which was immediately ignored in favor of how awesome she felt when she finally had things under control. Though she had learned a great deal technically in a short time, emotionally it was clear she had not grown at all, and perhaps never would. But her project was very nearly finished. All that remained was to perform a few embellishing flourishes within the material, so as to further emphasize the expert workmanship that had gone into the forging of this wonderful sock.

Of course, it was just one sock. Socks came in pairs. Also it was far too small. A baby would have difficulty with it. Certainly, that was a massive error. All she could do was groan. All that work it had been, too.

[Solus]

+30 TP

You go up to 126 TP meaning you cap off at 125SP! Congratulations!

[The Bearer of Bad News]

There was no further room for improvement. She was now the best that she would ever be in this field. Now there was only one thing left on the agenda - vindication.

[Exit via self-dismissal]