broken thread

How do we begin, I wonder, to take up the broken thread of our long-ago story?

As the clumps of men stretched and thinned into a long, broken thread, Louie sank through the field, to twelfth.

Above all, she proved quicker than the other women in such emergencies as a broken thread.

She has no labour to perform, beyond providing a supply of material to be wound, removing a bobbin when it is filled, placing an empty one in its place, and occasionally piecing a broken thread.

The young people returned to their places, and quickly forgot the incident, as they gayly took up the broken thread of conversation.