Chapter 57 – Another Handicraft Technique
Back in her days at the pastry institute in her previous life, Jade had focused on practical courses – specifically on cakes and cookies – and dropped all the bread-making classes after failing them multiple times. Yeast simply seemed to have something against her.
Occasionally, the institute offered additional classes – Chinese pastries, Malay kuih, Indian fried treats – and she signed up for all of them without hesitation. They were inexpensive, and she enjoyed them.
The only class she found half-interesting was food history. The lecturer would explain the origins of various pastries and ingredients, along with the traditional – often troublesome – methods of making them. That included things like making pastillage from scratch by preparing gelatine using animal skin, producing chocolate starting from fermenting cocoa pods, or extracting natural food colouring from plants.
She enjoyed the practical portions, but often dozed through the rest.
Even so, she had never imagined that one day she would apply those techniques – particularly the handling of pastillage – to making artificial flowers out of coloured paper and scrap fabric.
Then again, perhaps she shouldn’t be too surprised. Working with pastillage was not so different from working with clay. With the right temperature, pressure, and a bit of folding technique, paper and fabric could be shaped into curves as well. Heat was the key. With heated metal tools, the materials could be formed into a variety of shapes.
Her gaze shifted to the heated metal pieces resting on a metal tray over a coal pot. Each had been carefully selected from scrap for its shape.
Not all students in the tuition class were allowed to use heated metal.
The greeting card project used a bulky iron – originally meant for pressing clothes – to flatten their glued paper. Jade had made it clear that only the oldest student could handle it; she did not trust the younger ones with something so dangerous. The same rule applied to the trinket project and the lily project, as both required working with heated metal.
The lily project used wires and thin metal rods as stems, shaping them as needed. The trinket project used various pieces of metal to form settings for stones, feathers, and tiny artificial flowers. The oldest students in both groups – seated beside the tray of heated metal pieces and the coal pot – would provide the ironed paper or fabric according to the design drafts.
Jade had supervised them closely for several days, ensuring they would not burn themselves before allowing them to work more independently.
The students had proven remarkably resourceful. The lack of pliers did not stop them from using stones and branches to bend the wires. The absence of sandpaper did not stop them from using rough stone surfaces to smooth the metal. Although Jade had purchased new copper wire, they used it sparingly – perhaps she had taught them too well to make do with scraps.
With Wendy – the exceptionally creative girl – leading both projects, Jade’s role here was limited. She could no longer instruct them in every craft after providing the basic techniques she vaguely remembered. However, she could offer her sense of aesthetics, shaped by her past experiences, to guide them toward more appealing designs.
“Yes, adding a few small petals here would improve the rose.” Jade had piped and shaped countless frosting flowers in the past; she could spot flaws at a glance, even if her current fabric work did not yet match the students’ skill. “Here, let me show you. Cut it into this shape, then roll it here with the heated metal ball. Apply a bit of glue here, let it dry, and attach it at this angle… See?”
Olly, the girl holding the half-made rose, let out an impressed “ooh” when she saw the result. “Right, Miss Jade, I get it now.”
Jade continued answering the students’ questions one by one. When the last of them was done, her gaze fell on the bundle of newly purchased copper wire. “Actually, it doesn’t cost much to buy new wire…”
“We do use it,” Wendy replied, “but we can find plenty of suitable scrap metal. So we might as well save it for when we really need it. A penny is a penny – and scraps don’t cost anything.”
… Jade swore she had never intended to teach her students to become penny-pinching to this extent. Yet it seemed that all of them – even those from Mr. Anderson’s class who only attended her tuition – had surpassed her when it came to making use of scraps.
She glanced again at the copper wire. It looked smooth and bright now, but she knew the surface would dull and turn cloudy over time due to oxidation. Ideally, she would have preferred to use it while it was still new and shiny. Clearly, the students disagreed.
Unless, she could come up with something that specifically required new copper wire.
She picked up a coil. She had deliberately bought the thinnest kind, assuming it would be useful and difficult to source from scraps.
She had been wrong; artificial flowers and accessories did not necessarily require such fine wire, and her students preferred working with coarser materials.
She stared at the thin copper strand, racking her brain to come up with something…and then it came to her.
Chinese velvet flowers.
This had nothing to do with her cake-decorating skills. She had only seen it a few times, in videos she watched while scrolling through YouTube during lunch in her previous life.
She could roughly recall the process.
First, lay the silk threads parallel and clamp one end. Then brush them out, separating the strands back into fine fibres, and secure the other end. Next, bind the flattened bundle with fine copper wire – forming a delicate rib structure, something like the one along a fish’s belly. Cut along the wire, ensuring it runs through the centre. The result would resemble various thin, elongated brushes.
Twist the wire gently between the thumb and forefinger, and the fibres would bloom outward into a soft, fluffy texture.
Shape it into a curve, trim it, and iron it flat – now it would resemble a velvety petal. After that, fix the shape with glue. A skilled hand could even refine the curve further into ruffles, or dust the edges with gold powder. Arrange multiple petals together, and a delicate flower would take form.
In theory, Jade could replicate it. At the very least, she could teach the technique to her students – especially Wendy – and guide them toward more refined artificial flowers.
The problem was – she only had cotton thread.
This technique required silk.
Jade narrowed her eyes and reached for the basket of thread among the girls working with needles. She pulled out a skein of white thread. Without hesitation, she cut a length – cotton fibres were far shorter than silk fibres, so the length couldn’t be too long – clamped one end, and began brushing it out with a random brush she found among the trinket tools. Carefully securing the other end afterward.
Her uncertain actions drew attention.
The students slowed their work, glancing over as subtly as they could. They noticed the slight frown on Miss Jade’s face as she ran her fingers through the loosened fibres – fuzzy, coarse, prone to matting if handled carelessly.
Jade frowned more deeply, then proceeded anyway. She bound the thread bundle with fine copper wire and cut it into small, brush-like strips. One by one, she twisted them, blooming each into a small lobe. Then she picked up a flat piece of heated metal and pressed one outward, flattening it carefully. Finally, she dabbed the piece into starch glue and shaped it into a gentle curve, and cut it to size before setting it near the coal pot to dry.
“A petal!” Wendy exclaimed, no longer bothering to hide her distraction from shaping the scrap wire she had been working on.
“Yes, a petal.” Jade nodded, though she was not entirely satisfied with the result. “It’s dull, not shiny, a bit fuzzy. The glue doesn’t sit well on it… Oh, it’s flaking. I’ll need to make better glue… Anyway, this is another way to make artificial flowers, mostly for small hair accessories. Um… imagine a flower on my hairpin.”
The students’ gaze flicked between Jade’s simple, wooden hairpin and the tiny petal in her fingers, their eyes bright with interest.
“I’m not sure how large the flowers can be with this technique – you’ll have to experiment,” Jade continued. “But I’m sure it can be used for brooches, combs, or even earrings.”
The students began murmuring among themselves, discussing possible designs. Wendy, however, focused on something else. “Miss Jade, you said it’s dull and fuzzy. What can we do to make it shiny and smooth?”
She could already imagine how beautiful the flower would look if the petals had a glossy finish.
Jade shrugged. “There’s nothing we can do, unless we can get silk thread.”
“Oh,” Wendy’s voice fell slightly. She had never had the chance to visit a proper haberdasher; everything she knew of better fabric came from the scraps provided in the tuition class. She did not know the exact price of silk threads, but if it was not provided as material, it had to be pricey – pricier even than brand-new copper wire.
Still, she quickly rallied. “No worries. I’ll make it look good even with cotton thread!”
“Well, you don’t have to stick to this method.” Jade gave the girl a light pat on the shoulder. “The flowers you’ve been making with scrap fabric already look good. And you know which techniques suit which designs; you’ve marked them on your designs sheet, right?”
Wendy nodded. In her mind, she was already aiming to create something on par with the five-fold screen.
The embroidery for the screen was still in its early stages, with only faint pencil outlines marking the cloth. But watching the needlework girls guide their threads quick and precise, she could already imagine the final piece. It would be magnificent. Something worthy of a high auction price.
I want my work to sell well too, Wendy thought. I’m going to be an artisan. I can do this.
Jade, unaware of Wendy’s thoughts, continued moving through the classroom, answering questions where she could, and guiding the students where she could not.
An hour before dismissal, her thoughts drifted to the kitchen.
How was everything going under Josh’s direction? Well, probably not Josh’s alone, but with Sister Geenia in charge and Josh assisting her based on the recipe – or rather, the experimental steps – Jade had provided.
A meatball that wasn’t bouncy? A mushy meatball? The idea felt strange. To Jade, meatballs, especially fishballs, were always springy and chewy. Yet here, people considered that texture a sign that the food had gone wrong.
She would soon have the chance to find out.
At supper, she tasted the not-bouncy meatball, and it was nothing like she had expected.
She stared at the bitten food in her spoon, unsure of how to feel about it.