[Buddha-l] Craving the seamstress

[Joy Vriens]

In a small text on rebirth by Bhikkhu Bodhi, the following section is found:
CRAVING THE SEAMSTRESS 

Hence the Buddha calls craving the "seamstress". Just as a seamstress sews together different pieces of cloth, so does craving sew together one life to another. It ties together the succession of lives. Craving is so powerful that it can bridge the gap created by death and rebuild the whole house of sentient existence again and again. 

    Thro' many a birth in Sansara wandered I, 
    Seeking but not finding, the builder of this house. Sorrowful is repeated birth. 
    O House-builder! you are seen. You shall build no house again. 
    All your rafters are broken, your ridge-pole is shattered. 
    To dissolution (Nibbana) goes my mind. 
    The End of Craving have I attained. 
    Dhammapada (154) 
http://www.budsas.org/ebud/ebdha058.htm#R9
In Anguttara Nikaya, III 400 one finds:
" 'Name', friends, is one end, 'form' is the other end; consciousness is in the middle; and craving is the seamstress, for it is craving that stitches it into the arising of this and that existence." 
In my opinion, the notion of "rebirth" as BB seems to want to present it, doesn't apply or only as an aside. BB seems to want to make the point that craving is the seamstress who sows one life to the next one. This is not the point the buddha wants to make and this is particularly clear from the rest of the quoted text (AN) where the same reasoning and image are applied to the 6 internal sense-spheres and the 6 external sense-spheres.  
I don't want to go into a discussion about "rebirth", but just wanted to check if the image of craving the seamstress (which I quite like) is a bit too much ajusted to BB's agenda.