Across the check corner of the washroom table, the work of the stitched limitation tag on every batch began not with grand proclamations, but with Master Tailor Dima Fen and Jo Saye inspecting fifty stamped two-inch linen warning labels printed in waterproof iron-gall block letters and sewn directly into the outer cheek-hem of every mask alongside Thirteen-year-old Tavi and Sister Merrow. Jo Saye and Dima Fen insist that every single stitched batch carry a permanently sewn linen tag stating its working limitations. He refused to let any mask leave the shop unlabeled.
The technical core of the stitched limitation tag on every batch needed stitching the limitation tag with four-corner box-tacks on the outside of the garment so no foreman or landlord could tear the warning off and order a worker into a deep gas-filled pit. Throughout this phase of the cross-threshold collaboration between Jo Saye and Master Tailor Dima Fen, the crew held fast to building layered cloth, wet ash, and wool-grease baffles against invisible cellar damp. Every brass fitting, every stitched seam. Every thirty-minute lunch crossing had to answer to physical measurement rather than guild politics.
“Why sew the warning label onto the outside of the cheek where everyone in the street can read the ink, Master Dima?” young apprentice Hob asked as he bundled the first ten masks with hemp twine. “Wouldn’t the customers prefer a neat, plain front?”
