She marked the cloth before cutting. Chalk lines at first — selvage to selvage, clear enough for anyone to follow. Fold here. Cut here. Leave this much.
Over three years the lines shortened. Some became a nick in the fabric edge, a fold left standing, the shears set down at an angle. Her apprentice never asked what they meant.
A customer called it telepathy. It wasn't. Every mark assumed its particular reader — someone who'd handled this cloth before, who knew where the woman's hands would hesitate. The marks didn't encode instructions. They continued a conversation that had been going on for three years.
When the apprentice trained her own girl, she found she couldn't explain the marks. Not because she'd forgotten what they meant, but because they'd never meant anything apart from the one person reading them.
She went back to chalk lines. They worked for anyone. That was the problem.