Dreaming in Literature: Buttonholes?!

I woke up shaking from this afternoon nap:

In my dream, I had somehow landed in Walnut Grove or De Smet, Dakota Territory.  Anyway, I knew for sure I was in Laura-land.  I didn't know what else to do, so I went to school.  They were all on lunch recess.  There was Laura.  She was a teenager.  She didn't look like Melissa Gilbert.  She looked like this.

After all the girls found out that I wasn't living with my ma or pa, Laura decided that I needed a job.  "You can make buttonholes for Miss Beadle," she told me.

I thought Miss Beadle taught school, but I didn't say anything.  Maybe she sewed on the side.

Laura had everything arranged in minutes.  "You can start right away.  I've got chores, but Ma will be over to check your buttonholes."

Problem:  I had no idea how to make a buttonhole, and not even a ghost of an idea of how to begin.  Scissors?  Thread?  All of the other girls knew how to make buttonholes, except Nellie Oleson, who said she didn't care to know.  I didn't want to admit that I was anything like her.  

Suddenly, I was upstairs at Miss Beadle's, and I had a pile of shirts to buttonhole before suppertime.  Feeling nervous, I dropped the thimble several times.  I was still working out on which finger to wear the thimble, when Laura sent a message that Ma was busy but Mary would be over to check my buttonholes.

Mary?  Mary was blind, but obviously she knew her way around a buttonhole, too.  I could hear her climbing the stairs.  I was frantically looking for a shirt that had been finished.  She wouldn't be able to tell if I had done it myself or not, and that would give me time to figure it all out.  

Not a stinking shirt in that whole room had a single finished buttonhole, and Mary was getting closer.  I panicked and decided to sneak out on Mary and go ask Nellie's advice.  Maybe she wasn't so bad after all.  She couldn't be any worse than buttonholes.