The pages are designed to appear like embroidered quilts. The funny, macabre story is about Mary Ann who becomes a veritable human human torch as the tale unravels. The illustations and typography are both plays on the ideas of quilt-making. So named because each sheet looks like an old fashioned, cross-stitched sampler. It is about Mary Ann, born 1909. We meet her on the first page surrounded by dozens of cross-stitched pictures which later reappear as her gloomy story unfolds. They include a flatiron, a goat, a pig, a sinister man on a bicycle, etc., in a wide range of pastel colours: black is absent until her obituary on the last page. From her life and hard times, Mary Ann could have appropriately been called Calamity Jane but while her tale is desperate, its telling and illustrating is a frivolous delight. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.