Most winners used their gift certificates to enroll in a Quilting for Beginners course, and most made dramatic improvements. They all bought fabric, books, and notions at Quilts ’n Things, and many signed up for more advanced classes. Gretchen never would have thought to increase class enrollments by demonstrating to potential customers how sorely they needed the help.
“I wonder if this is how Ami Simms attracts new students,” Gretchen remarked once.
Heidi did not look up from the rack of quilt patterns she was arranging—not in alphabetical order as Gretchen would have done, but according to season. “Who?” she asked absently.
“Ami Simms. I said, I wonder if she uses her contest to get more students to enroll in classes, but I was only joking. She probably has so many students she has to turn some away.”
Heidi glanced over her shoulder at Gretchen, puzzled. “What contest?”
“The Worst Quilt in the World contest. She’s been running one for years. I assumed that’s where you got the idea.”
Heidi shook her head and shrugged, turning back to her work. “I’ve never heard of her, or her contest. Maybe she took the idea from us.”
“Never heard of Ami Simms?” repeated Gretchen, dubious.
“Of course you have. We carry her books. We met her at Paducah three years ago.”
Heidi made a helpless, apologetic gesture as she filed patterns.
Gretchen watched her in disbelief. Why on earth would Heidi pretend she had never heard of Ami Simms? Was she that unwilling to admit she had taken inspiration from Ami’s contest rather than invent it herself?
Gretchen already knew the answer to that one.
Although she and Heidi did not always agree, Gretchen liked to think they complemented each other: Heidi brought the imagination and spark to the business, while Gretchen understood how to turn her partner’s outlandish ideas into workable plans. Heidi was energetic and inventive; Gretchen, steady and practical. They were two halves of an excellent management team, and neither could have succeeded as well without the other. Gretchen often thought, however, that although they were both essential to the success of Quilts ’n Things, Heidi seemed to have most of the fun.
As the years passed, the quilt shop thrived, riding the surging wave of the quilting revival. Gretchen wasn’t sure whether Heidi was a trendsetter, putting forth styles and products she liked best and taking a chance that others would share her tastes, or if she was simply quick to perceive the sways and swells of popular opinion and could adapt quickly to match them. Either way, Quilts ’n Things earned a reputation for being the place to shop for everything new and innovative in the quilting world. Heidi advocated rotary cutter techniques and establishing a presence on the Internet when Gretchen was still worrying about how to best provide templates for their block-of-the-month kits. Heidi invested in a longarm quilting machine and charged customers by the hour to use it at a time when Gretchen and her friends were still wrestling with the question of whether a machine-quilted top could be considered a true quilt. Before long, Gretchen began to notice a clear division within their clientele: the younger, newer quilters brought their questions to Heidi and ignored Gretchen, while the older, longtime quilters sought Gretchen’s advice and assumed Heidi was her less experienced assistant. Gretchen, to her secret shame, never clarified the reality of their arrangement.
Sometimes Heidi went too far. Gretchen was shocked and angered when she returned from her day off to discover that her partner had replaced all the shelves of her beloved floral calicos with brightly colored, exotic batiks. “Our customers will love these,” Heidi protested, bewildered by Gretchen’s reaction.
“Our customers love the calicos,” insisted Gretchen.
“They can still have them,” Heidi hastened to reassure her, and compromised by relocating the remaining bolts to the back shelves where they stored clearance merchandise. But hardly anyone bothered to look for them because they had usually reached their spending limits by the time they made it that far into the store. Taking inventory at the end of the month, Heidi remarked that only about five yards of the calicos had sold, and that she had been right to move them to make room for the highly popular batiks. When Gretchen pointed out that Heidi’s decision had become a self-fulfilling prophecy, Heidi merely shrugged. She did not need to perpetuate the argument; she had had her own way and she was selling fabric. For the sake of workplace harmony, Gretchen masked her annoyance and contented herself with making sure her fellow calico lovers knew exactly where to find the bolts and by placing baskets full of floral calico fat quarters at the checkout line to encourage impulse purchases.
Their educational philosophies differed even more than their tastes in fabric. Gretchen instructed aspiring quilters as she had been taught, learning the fundamentals of quiltmaking while making simple blocks and moving on to more difficult patterns and new skills when the basics were mastered. Heidi believed that contemporary women did not have time to quilt as their grandmothers had. If they were going to spend an entire Saturday at a quilting workshop, they wanted to have a finished top at the end. Her classes emphasized rotary cutting, quick piecing, working with prepared patterns, and machine sewing every stitch. “Look at how many of my students finish their workshop quilts, bring them back to show us, and sign up for another class,” said Heidi when they were planning the next session of courses and were trying to efficiently divide up the classroom time.
“That’s true,” said Gretchen. It was easier to win over Heidi if she agreed with her first. “But at the end of the semester, my students can look at any quilt block, figure out how it’s constructed, design their own quilts, and draft their own patterns. Your students can make that one quilt. They make it quickly and well, but they can only make that one quilt. They might vary the colors or size, but it’s always the same.”
“That’s what they like,” countered Heidi. “They want certainty. They enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. They like having finished quilts to put on beds or give to grandchildren for Christmas. Their friends see the quilts and sign up for the next class. Maybe your students can decipher any pattern, but they also have closets stuffed full of UFOs.”
Gretchen knew her students did finish quilts—perhaps not as many as Heidi’s, but the quilts they did complete were unique, each one an original creative expression of its maker. The mass production of Heidi’s students could not compete. Of course, she would never say so aloud. Heidi’s students were lovely women and they enjoyed quilting as much as Gretchen’s favorite pupils did. But their sole focus on reproducing other quilters’ patterns underscored another important difference between the two partners: Gretchen was most concerned with process, Heidi with product.
For many years, their partnership weathered minor disagreements and occasional full-blown arguments. They always reconciled, in part because Gretchen never failed to appease Heidi when she became tearful and melodramatic, but mostly because Quilts ’n Things was too important to them both to sacrifice its success to petty squabbling.
Just in time for its tenth anniversary, Quilts ’n Things was selected to appear in a special issue of Contemporary Quiltmaker magazine titled “The Best Quilt Shops of the Millennium.” Privately, Gretchen and Joe agreed that the title smacked of hyperbole and really ought to be amended to “The Best American Quilt Shops Currently in Operation That Carry Our Magazine,” but neither would have suggested they decline to participate. For all her self-deprecating jokes, Gretchen was honored to be included, and Heidi was thrilled with the prospect of so much free publicity.
The three days the team from the magazine spent in Sewickley was as close to stardom as Gretchen figured she was ever likely to get. Their stylist helped her select an outfit and did her hair and makeup for the photo shoot at the store. A reporter interviewed her at length, twice on her own and once more with Heidi and their two part-time employees. As he inquired about her vision for the shop, the inspiration for her quilts, and her history as a quilt-maker, Gretchen was s
truck by the realization that no one had ever asked her these questions before. She had quilted most of her life, and now, finally, someone cared enough to ask. Best of all, the reporter represented tens of thousands of readers who also cared.
A few months later, the magazine arrived from the printer’s and was arranged with much fanfare on the new book display at the front of the quilt shop. Gretchen knew that the reporter had interviewed Heidi just as thoroughly as her, and yet she was stunned when she turned to the article and discovered a full-page photo of Heidi beaming out at her. A caption identified her as “Heidi Mueller, owner, creative inspiration, and driving force behind the finest quilt shop in western Pennsylvania.” Scattered among the photos of customers browsing through the shop were some of Heidi smiling over a cup of coffee in her kitchen, lecturing to an adoring class in the schoolhouse, wearing a look of thoughtful introspection as she arranged bolts of fabric—and one small group photo of Heidi standing with her arms folded in the foreground as Gretchen and the two other employees smiled admiringly at her from behind the checkout counter. Amid the paragraphs about how Heidi launched the shop and kept it running with the help of her “able assistants” was one quote from the lengthy interviews Gretchen had given the reporter. “Our customers tell us every day how much the shop reflects Heidi’s creativity,” Gretchen had told him. “She has a true gift for inspiring new quilters to take up the needle.”
If not for that quote and the small staff picture, Gretchen would have not appeared in the article at all. No one who read the magazine would suspect her true role at Quilts ’n Things.
Heidi was throwing a Publication Day Party, so Gretchen could not slip on her sweater and walk home to sort things out on her own. Dazed, she moved through the celebrating crowd, accepting their congratulations, autographing the small group picture, helping customers with their purchases, and keeping up appearances. The cash register rarely paused in ringing up sales. The magazine had indeed brought out the quilters, which ultimately was the most important thing. The success of the shop, she reminded herself when she was finally able to escape home, was more important than personal recognition.
Joe did not entirely agree.
He read the article and might have stormed off to the shop to give Heidi a piece of his mind if his old injury had not been acting up, forcing him to lie prone on the sofa and restrict movements. “How did she do it?” he asked, eyes glittering with barely suppressed rage. “How did she pull this off? You talked to that reporter for hours.”
Gretchen felt dull and tired. “I suppose I didn’t sing my own praises enough.”
“And Heidi exaggerated hers.” He winced as he shifted to his side. “You ought to call that magazine and set them straight.”
“What good would that do?”
“They might print a retraction.”
“And again, what good would that do?” The quilting world ran largely on goodwill. Anything she said against Heidi would make Gretchen seem small and spiteful, and Quilts ’n Things would suffer for it.
“It would set the record straight. Heidi’s taken all the credit.”
“She can have it,” said Gretchen wearily. “I’m still a partner, no matter what the rest of the world thinks.”
But she soon discovered that Heidi was all too willing to believe her own press. In the shop, her requests took on the air of commands. She ignored Gretchen’s recommendations when it came time to order new fabric. She adjusted their schedules so that Gretchen worked every weekend instead of alternating with her as they had always done before. She slipped so naturally into the role of manager that it was difficult to disagree with her without seeming petty. Their other employees did not seem to object to the shift in power, if they even noticed it. Gretchen was struck by the alarming possibility that from their perspective, perhaps nothing had changed. Perhaps this was the way it had always been, and Gretchen was just the last to know.
Gretchen’s love for the quilt shop endured, but she was no longer content. Enjoying her work took more effort, but she put a smile on her face and reminded herself how much better off she was now than she had been as an itinerant quilting instructor and Heidi’s housecleaner.
But she was well aware that Heidi deliberately failed to reorder bolts of Gretchen’s favorite floral calicos unless a customer made a specific request. She also altered the teaching schedule, assigning more classes to herself and fewer to Gretchen. Gretchen found it difficult to criticize the changes. From an economic standpoint they made perfect sense, as an increasing number of their customers preferred Heidi’s methods. And yet she missed the old days, when she felt more useful, more relevant.
When Heidi began self-publishing a line of original patterns under the Quilts ’n Things name, Gretchen welcomed the new direction for their partnership, hoping that it would renew her creative spark as well as her interest in the job. She missed that sense of anticipation that something unexpected and delightful would be waiting for her when she went into work each day. But when she approached Heidi with two designs that she wanted to publish, Heidi balked. “These are nice quilts,” said Heidi, returning the drawings with an apologetic shrug, “but they don’t really have the right look for the line.”
“What do you mean?” asked Gretchen, hurt.
“Well, they’re kind of old-fashioned, don’t you think? The first three Quilts ’n Things patterns were for brightly colored, fun, modern quilts. Yours are more … retro. You’re locked into this blocky-blocky sampler style, and most quilters have moved beyond that.” Heidi spoke gently, but that took none of the sting from her words. “Why don’t you try to make a more contemporary design, and maybe we can consider publishing that?”
Gretchen tried to convince Heidi that many quilters still enjoyed making samplers, as evidence pointing to the brisk sales within their own shop of books like Dear Jane, Quilted Diamonds, and My Journey with Harriet. Their customers’ requests that they stock more reproduction fabrics indicated that the “retro” look appealed to quilters as much as contemporary designs did.
When Heidi continued to refuse, Gretchen grew indignant. “I am as much a part of Quilts ’n Things as you are,” she declared. “A pattern line using the Quilts ’n Things name should represent my style as well as yours.”
Heidi turned away, shaking her head. She busied herself with paperwork on the desk and muttered under her breath.
A word caught Gretchen’s ear. “What did you say?” The office door was open and passing customers might hear, but she did not care.
“I said that you’re the junior partner,” said Heidi. “You apparently need the reminder. I can’t put my store’s name to anything I’m not proud of. If you don’t like it, my daughter would be happy to buy out your share, or you can be a silent partner and not come into the shop anymore.”
Shocked, Gretchen could not reply. Heidi studied her for a moment, took her silence as submission, and left Gretchen alone in the office.
Gretchen went home without a word for anyone. She called in sick the next morning and was relieved when one of the part-time employees answered so she did not have to speak to Heidi. Heidi would consider her excuse a lie, but it was not. Gretchen was sick-sick at heart, sick and tired. Worst of all was the sinking suspicion that Heidi’s decision was justified. Gretchen’s quilts were old-fashioned. She had branched out from her beloved floral calicos in recent years to tone-on-tones and graphic prints, but her quilts were still composed of traditional blocks in traditional layouts. They were beautifully and exquisitely made, if she did say so herself, with perfect points and graceful curves, each tiny piece in its precise and perfect place. But in an age of raw edge appliqué and fusible webbing, none of that seemed to matter anymore.
It was time she faced facts: The quilting world had passed her by. She felt like a mother who had nurtured a child from the utter dependence of infancy through the awkward teenage years only to watch her child suddenly blossom into a Phi Beta Kappa cardiologist or Supreme Court justice or rock
et scientist too busy and too important to call home anymore. She had loved quilting at a time when few others did, but it had grown away from her, and she could not change to keep up with it. A woman like her was fortunate to have any connection at all to the wider quilting world beyond her own sewing machine and lap hoop. She would be a fool to throw that away.
And she had Joe to think about. The years had not been kind to his old injury, and there were days when his back was so stiff and painful that he could not manage his tools. For years he had spoken wistfully of retiring to the country, where he could enjoy his woodworking without the pressure to complete pieces for clients. Gretchen longed to grant him that wish, but they knew they had to remain in the city so Gretchen could work. Retirement was a long time off for both of them. It might never come.
When Gretchen returned to the quilt shop, chastened and resigned, she and Heidi continued on as if their confrontation in the office had never occurred. Perhaps as a conciliatory gesture, from that day forward Heidi worked on the Quilts ’n Things patterns away from the shop, on her own time, and never asked Gretchen to hang the pattern packs on the display rack or to fill Internet orders. Occasionally, Heidi would admire a quilt Gretchen had made and agree to consider it for the Quilts ’n Things pattern line; she must have thought she was being supportive and encouraging, but the sketches and instructions always ended up in Gretchen’s employee mailbox with a brief note of rejection providing only the vaguest of explanations why they were not suitable. Gretchen found Heidi’s ongoing interest painful to bear. It would have been a relief had Heidi stopped asking for submissions they both knew she would eventually reject.
Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters Page 26