Lace-style ornamental back piece

The pattern came back from Hale's mill this morning with a note pinned to the corner. The left wing sits a hair low, the clerk wrote, and the girls at the pillows cannot make it lie flat. I have had the card on the table since dinner, holding it up to the window and then to the looking glass, and I cannot see the fault. Every fold I make shows me a second mistake under the first.

The piece is the long one for the Honiton collar, a spine of scrolls running from the top edge down to a point, with webbed panels either side and rosettes at the hips. Mother always said a symmetrical pattern is nothing but one half told twice, and the second telling must never come from memory. You prick the first side on the card, fold it along the centre line, and pin through so the holes match. Simple enough on paper. But I drew the right wing on a morning when my hand would not keep still, and the fold has been lying to me ever since.

I sat with the card until the lamp smoked, then took my knife to the right wing and cut it free. The left had been true all along. I had only trusted the wrong half. When I laid the two sheets together over the old sampler, the scrolls ran down the middle like a single thread drawn through, and the rosettes sat level as two cups on a saucer. I have pricked the new wing tonight, every hole. Send the girls the card on Monday, and tell Hale to stop writing to me about wings.

Your loving sister, Ada