I don't waaaaaant to cheat on the applique! I want the dotter to have soft-focus memories of her darling mudder seated on the divan, sewing hoop in hand, working diligently on a Labor of Love...sort of like this:

A very pretty daydream, trust me. But, Miss C. and Theresa, you may have OmegaMom joining you in the ranks of the no-sew (or machine-sew) shortcutters very soon. It seems that an hours' worth of teeny-tiny hand-stitching awoke an old Nemesis. Many moons ago, OmegaMom had a few days' worth of intense data entry on a database she was playing with. By the end of the 2nd day, her wrist was in intense pain when twisted, there was a mechanical icepick jabbing into her upper arm every thirty seconds, she could trace her radial nerve just by the bruise-like pain in her arm, and a variety of fingers had gone numb. Let me tell you, this was Not Fun. And it didn't go away. So OmegaMom trucked off to the doc's office and said, "I have this pain..." The physician's assistant, a lovely lady with the name of Nitza, a rattail down her back emerging from her just-below-the-ears haircut, and a brusque, no-nonsense manner, had OmegaMom sit down on a chair, then she came up in front of her, pressed her hands on OmegaMom's head, and bore down with all her weight. OmegaMom shrieked as the icepick JABBED with ferocious enthusiasm. Nitza promptly wrote up a prescription for physical therapy. OmegaMom really dug her physical therapist, a new-agey gal who, in addition to traditional PT stuff like ultrasound massages, traction, exercises, and just plain old behavior modification (N.B.: do not sit at your computer desk peering like a turtle. This is not good physical form.), was also into really neat-o keen-o stuff like Zero Balancing (which really works). Long story short: it took six months of physical therapy for the little man with the icepick to go away and for OmegaMom to be able to grab her purse from the passenger seat in the car without gasping in pain. The Nemesis seems to have returned. Hopefully for a short stay. But, just in case you ever thought of driving your cute sporty stick-shift Outback Sport along the twisty-turny dirt road from Bone Valley through Mineral Basin and back up to Small Mountain City the day after you've reawakened such a Nemesis, here's a clue: Don't. Just don't do it. Even if the scenery is grand and the company pleasant. Because you, too, will find yourself popping ibuprofen and aspirin like it was candy, and mournfully regarding a half-finished horsie applique with the dire suspicion that That Horse is the cause of all your pain.