An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler

by Jennier Chiaverini

  I was not the only one who found her insufferable. We adults would exchange amazed looks at each new piece of foolishness, and even the children screwed up their faces in bewilderment as they looked from their favorite cousin to this strange creature from the apparently heavenly land of Philadelphia. We all pondered the same question: yes, she’s lovely to look at, but what on earth does our dear Richard see in her?

  James warned me that I had better get used to her, just in case Agnes became a permanent addition to the family. Oh, I tried to like her, and I vowed to keep my feelings hidden for Richard’s sake. Surely, I told myself, once we knew Agnes better, we would come to see her as Richard did.

  One afternoon Claudia and I invited her to join us as we quilted. “How charming,” she exclaimed, fingering the edge of my latest quilt. Do you remember the pictures of the Baltimore Album style quilts I showed you? Well, that’s what I was working on then. I much prefer piecing to the intricate appliqué required for that style, but one of my closest school friends was planning to be married in the spring. This style was not quite as fashionable as others then, but it was my friend’s favorite. The quilt was going to be a surprise, you see. Her husband-to-be was fighting in Europe, and they were to be wed as soon as he came home.

  But as I was saying, Agnes fingered the edge of my quilt and exclaimed, “How charming.” Then she added, “In Philadelphia we can buy our own blankets, but I don’t suppose you can do that out here in the country, can you?”

  I removed the edge of the quilt from her tiny, grasping hand. “Quite right. There isn’t a single store within a hundred miles of here. I hope you remembered to pack everything.”

  “Sylvia.” Claudia’s voice held a note of warning.

  “Really?” Agnes’s mouth fell open in a way that made her look quite foolish. “Not a single store?”

  “Not a one,” I replied. “In fact, I had never even heard of a store until Richard described them to me in one of his letters. At first I thought he was just making them up, but Father told me he was telling the truth. To me it sounded like the stuff of fairy tales, but then, I’ve never been to Philadelphia.” I picked up my needle and continued sewing.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Agnes staring at me in confusion, her cheeks growing pink. Then she turned on her heel and flounced out of the room.

  “Sylvia, that wasn’t very nice.”

  “After that remark, she’s lucky I didn’t say worse. Why make a quilt when you can just buy a blanket? Honestly.”

  “I agree she could be more tactful, but even so—”

  “What does Richard see in her?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a puzzle.”

  “She’s the puzzle,” I retorted, and that’s how it started. From that time on, whenever Claudia or I referred to Agnes, we called her Bachelor’s Puzzle. Sometimes we called her BP, or the Puzzle, as in “I wonder if Richard will bring the Puzzle home for spring break?” or “Richard writes that he and BP are going to the Winter Ball.” Or “Dear me, I hope Bachelor’s Puzzle can remember her own name today, indeed I do.”

  We never said it to her, or when anyone else other than Claudia and I could hear. But we said it all the same, and it wasn’t very nice, and I’ll never forgive myself for giving her that dreadful nickname.

  “Sounds to me like she deserved it,” Sarah said, laughing.

  “Oh, no, not you, too,” Mrs. Compson protested, joining in. “It isn’t nice to laugh at other people, even if they are silly, foolish creatures. Especially not then.” She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.

  “What did Richard say when Agnes told him about it?”

  Mrs. Compson stopped laughing. “He never said anything, so I assume she didn’t tell him.” She fixed Sarah with a studious gaze. “And now, young lady, it’s your turn.”

  “My turn for what?”

  “I’m tired of doing all the talking around here. Now it’s your turn to answer some questions.”

  Sarah shifted in her seat. “What kind of questions?”

  “Let’s start with your family. What about your parents? Any brothers or sisters?”

  “No, I’m an only child. So’s Matt. My father died years ago.” Sarah paused. “Your stories are much more interesting than anything I could tell. I don’t see why you’d be interested—”

  “Indulge me. Did your mother ever remarry?”

  “No, but she’s probably set a world record for the number of boyfriends held in a single lifetime. Does that count?”

  “Ah. I see I’ve struck a nerve.” Mrs. Compson leaned forward. “Why does that bother you?”

  “It doesn’t bother me. She can date whomever she likes as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t affect me or my life.”

  “Quite right. Of course not.” Mrs. Compson cocked her head to one side and smiled knowingly.

  Sarah tried not to fidget. “You know, Matt and I were talking—”

  “About why you’re angry with your mother?”

  “No. I mean, of course not. I’m not angry with her. What makes you say that?”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Well … she’s a nurse, and she kind of looks like me except she has shorter hair, and she and my dad met at a bowling alley, and now she likes to take expensive trips that her boyfriends pay for. Really, there’s not much to say.”

  “Sarah?”

  “What?”

  “Your storytelling abilities leave much to be desired.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Perhaps you might as well tell me what you and Matthew were discussing instead.”

  Sarah paused for a moment, wondering if Mrs. Compson really did intend to let her off the hook that easily. “Matt and I were wondering if you’d like to celebrate the Fourth of July with us. Bonnie Markham says there’s going to be a parade downtown, an outdoor concert on the square, and a quilt show on campus. We’d like to go, and we thought you’d like to join us, maybe?”

  “I think I’d like that very much.” Mrs. Compson looked pleased. “And since I entered a quilt in that show myself, I suppose I ought to see how it fared.”

  Nineteen

  Early the next week Sarah finished cleaning two more suites in the south wing and started a new block, Posies Round the Square. Mrs. Compson warned her that this block would be the most difficult by far since it required two new piecing techniques: sewing curved seams and appliqué.

  Forewarned though she was, Sarah still found herself becoming frustrated. As she gritted her teeth and attempted for the third time to join the same convex blue piece to the same concave background piece without stretching the bias edges out of place, Sarah decided that sewing a straight seam was to sewing a curved seam as brushing her teeth was to having emergency root canal. Her skills improved by the time she finished the block, however, so she admitted that curved seams were pretty, and they did create many new design possibilities. Still, she didn’t want to sew any more curved seams anytime soon.

  She found appliqué easier. Mrs. Compson instructed her to cut the leafshaped piece from the darkest fabric, but to add a seam allowance of only an eighth of an inch this time. Sarah basted the appliqué in place on the background fabric, and after securing the thread with a knot, she used the tip of her needle to tuck the raw edge of the appliqué under as she sewed it down. Sarah was pleased to see that her stitches were virtually invisible from the front of the block, and that the curves of the leaf were smooth and the two points were sharp. Before long she added a second leaf and two concentric circles resembling a flower to the design.

  Sarah finished the Posies Round the Square and started a new appliqué block called Lancaster Rose on Wednesday, the same day she planned to meet the Tangled Web Quilters after work to help set up for the Waterford Summer Quilt Festival.

  After sharing a quick supper with Matt, Sarah drove to the Waterford College campus, hoping she’d be able to find a parking space on the main street near the front gates, where she planned to meet Summer. To
her dismay she found most of the streets adjacent to campus blocked off by blaze-orange sawhorses as city workers assembled refreshment stands and bleachers along the parade route. Finally she found an empty spot designed for a compact car and somehow managed to maneuver the pickup into it. By the time she locked the truck and ran to the meeting place, Summer was already there.

  “Hi, Sarah,” Summer called when she came into view, jumping up from the bench where she had been waiting. Her long auburn hair swung lightly around her shoulders.

  “I’m really sorry I’m late,” Sarah said, catching her breath. “Will the quilting guild still let us in?”

  Summer laughed. “You’re only a few minutes late. Don’t worry so much. They wouldn’t make us sit outside when there’s so much work to do. The rest of the Tangled Webbers are already there.”

  The two young women hurried up the hill to the library. Sarah had never been there, but Summer claimed to have spent the equivalent of one third of her life within its walls. A security guard waved them through the turnstile when Summer flashed her student ID and explained their errand.

  Once inside, Summer led Sarah around a corner and through a set of glass double doors into a long, spacious gallery. Four skylights down the center of the high ceiling left squares of light on the gleaming parquet floor. On the long wall to their left hung several portraits of library benefactors, while the opposite wall was covered almost entirely by rectangular, mirrored-glass windows separated by thin steel frames. Sarah could see the grassy hill crisscrossed by sidewalks sloping toward the main street, but the students outside would see only their own reflections. The dark tint would allow enough sunlight in to brighten the room without fading the colors of the quilts that would soon be displayed there.

  Fifty or more women of all ages had gathered in several scattered groups throughout the gallery, their conversations creating a sonorous hum occasionally punctuated by bursts of laughter. At the far end of the room several women were setting up folding tables and covering them with colorful print fabric. In the middle of the room, armchairs and loveseats had been pushed aside to make room for what looked like stacks of lumber. In a group of helpers near one of the piles, Sarah and Summer easily spotted Gwen’s red hair standing out among the blonds, browns, blacks, and grays of the Tangled Web Quilters surrounding her.

  They joined their friends. Summer greeted her mother with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. As Gwen laughed and brushed her daughter’s hair out of her eyes, Sarah felt a pang of envy. She wondered what it would be like to have a mother who was also a friend. Summer and Gwen were always doing things together, but Sarah couldn’t spend more than fifteen minutes with her mother without feeling exhausted and strained, as if every detail of her life had been dissected and denounced.

  She realized she was grinding her back molars just thinking about it, and made herself relax.

  The others were poking through the nearest stack of boards and chatting, and Sarah pretended she had been listening all along. She noticed that the boards were cut to specific lengths, and some of the pieces had notches carved into their ends.

  “The first thing you need to do is take one of these long poles,” Bonnie was saying as she pulled a long piece of wood from the pile. “Attach four of these feet so that the pole will stand up.”

  “I’ll sort out the pile while you younger girls take care of the lifting,” Mrs. Emberly said.

  “Then you assemble another pole and put the crossbar across the top,” Bonnie continued. “It should fit into the notches.”

  “Will we drape the quilts over the crossbars?” Sarah asked.

  “Each quilt will have a hanging sleeve, a tube of fabric sewn on the back,” Judy said. “We’ll take down the crossbar, slide it into the hanging sleeve, and then put the bar back up.”

  “It’s kind of like hanging curtains with a curtain rod, only heavier,” Summer added.

  The Tangled Web Quilters got to work. When they had finished three quilt stands, a tall woman wearing her dark brown hair in a pageboy cut waved to them from across the room.

  “Get ready for inspection,” Gwen said as the woman approached.

  “Just ignore her and maybe she’ll go away,” Diane hissed.

  “Be nice,” Bonnie said. “It isn’t easy to run a quilt show.”

  Sarah didn’t have time to ask who the woman was before she reached them. “We’re so glad you could make it,” she exclaimed. She squinted at their quilt stands. “How are things going over here?”

  “Just fine, Mary Beth,” Bonnie said.

  Mary Beth grasped the nearest pole and shook it. “Seems sturdy enough. Maybe a little wobbly.”

  Diane frowned. “No one will be grabbing the poles like that during the show, so we’re probably safe.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. You wouldn’t believe some of the things we’ve seen at these shows. Someone could trip and fall, bump into a pole and knock it on someone’s head, and then it’s lawsuit city.”

  “We’ll be sure they’re safe before you put the quilts on them,” Judy said.

  “That’s all we ask,” Mary Beth said. “When you’re done, we’ll doublecheck them just to be sure.” She smiled and hurried across the room to inspect another group.

  “Must she refer to herself as ‘we’?” Diane grumbled.

  Gwen grinned. “You’re just annoyed because she’s been guild president six years in a row.” She turned to Sarah. “After her first two years, Diane offered to take over—”

  “I thought she might want a break from it, that’s all. It’s a lot of work.”

  “—but Mary Beth took it the wrong way.”

  “She acted like Diane was plotting a military overthrow,” Judy said.

  “That’s because it looked like I was going to win.”

  Mrs. Emberly sighed. “It was quite unpleasant. At the meeting before the election, Mary Beth stood up in the front of the room and asked us if we’d feel comfortable putting the guild and the Waterford Summer Quilt Festival in the hands of someone who had never won a ribbon.”

  “How mean,” Sarah exclaimed. “What did you do?”

  “You won’t believe this,” Gwen said. “Diane just laughed it off.”

  “Until after the meeting, that is,” Summer said. “Then she totally blew up. I’d tell you what she said, but Mom covered up my ears for most of it.”

  “I did not.”

  “Soon after that, and not coincidentally, our bee seceded from the Waterford Quilting Guild,” Judy explained. “We still enter our quilts in the shows and help out with various projects, but for weekly meetings, we prefer our own little group.”

  “Most guilds aren’t so political,” Bonnie said. “And not everyone in the Waterford Quilting Guild is like Mary Beth. You’ll find that out when you get to know them.”

  That evening, though, Sarah was too busy to meet anyone new. Several hours passed as she and the other Tangled Web Quilters assembled the large wooden stands and moved them into rows. The wooden pieces were heavy, and after a while Sarah began to grow weary.

  When the last stands were in place, Mary Beth went to the front of the room and waved her arms in the air to get everyone’s attention. “Thanks again for all your help,” she called out. “We’ll see you tomorrow at the quilt show. Now we have to ask everyone who isn’t on the Festival Committee to leave, please. Thanks again.”

  The helpers began to move toward the doors.

  Even though it was almost midnight, Sarah was dismayed. “But I wanted to see the quilts,” she protested as the Tangled Web Quilters went outside. They headed down the hill to the main street where Sarah and Gwen had parked their cars; the others lived close enough to campus to walk home.

  “Only members of the Festival Committee are allowed to see the quilts before the show opens tomorrow,” Summer explained. “They’ll hang the quilts and get them ready for the judges.”

  “How will they decide who gets a ribbon?”

  “There are six categories
according to style and size, with ribbons for first, second, and third place in each category. Then there’s Best of Show, which means exactly that: the best quilt out of all categories. Each of the four judges also gets to pick a Judge’s Choice, and then there’s Viewers’ Choice. If you get to the show early enough you get to vote for your favorite quilt.”

  “How early?” Sarah asked, thinking about Mrs. Compson’s entry.

  “Before ten. My mom won one of those a few years ago, and she said it was the highest honor any one of her quilts had ever received.”

  “That’s because judges’ methods are utterly inscrutable,” Gwen said. “You might make an absolutely stunning quilt, but a judge might disregard it if you quilted it by machine rather than by hand, or for some other reason whose grounds are wholly personal.”

  Bonnie sighed. “Now Gwen, be fair.”

  “Who’s not being fair? I didn’t mean to suggest that judges make arbitrary choices, just that matters of personal taste strongly influence how we evaluate art. That being the case, I’d prefer the appreciation of a broad range of people, quilters and nonquilters alike, rather than the stamp of approval from a few select so-called experts.”

  “Mom’s had some conflict with judges in the past,” Summer explained to Sarah in an undertone.

  “I never would’ve guessed.”

  “Then again,” Gwen mused, “the Viewers’ Choice ribbon poses problems of its own. Does one pander to the opinions of the general public or does one pursue one’s own artistic vision? What if those two paths cannot coincide? And then there’s that whole problem of pitting artists against each other. Talk about stifling artistic cooperation. What should one do then?”

  “Stop entering your stuff in quilt shows, I suppose,” Diane said. “I could do without your competition, especially if you’re going to fret about it so much.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Fine,” Gwen said, pretending to be wounded. “I’ll just continue to wrestle with these important moral issues myself, thank you very much.”