An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler

by Jennier Chiaverini

  Quickly Julia scribbled her own name and handed the slip of paper to the staff member passing through the center aisle. Her heart pounded as Sylvia and her staff tallied the votes at the front of the room.

  “Your attention, please,” Sylvia finally said, and the quilters fell silent. “I’m pleased to announce that by an overwhelming margin, the winner of the Campers’ Talent Show is—Julia Merchaud!”

  Numb with relief, Julia went to the dais to receive her prize, acknowledging the audience’s applause as graciously as she could manage.

  “Congratulations,” Grace said when Julia returned to her seat. She nodded in response.

  “What did you win?” Vinnie asked.

  Only then did Julia inspect her prize. Sylvia had given her an Elm Creek Quilts pin identical to those her friends had won on games night.

  “Now we all have one,” Vinnie exclaimed, then caught herself. “Oh. Except for you, Megan.”

  Megan shrugged. “We still have one more day of classes. Maybe I’ll have better luck tomorrow.” She smiled at Julia. “Congratulations.”

  Suddenly Julia was stung by shame. “You deserve this more than I do.”

  “What are you talking about? You won, fair and square.”

  “But I only won because …” Because she was more popular, because she was famous, because the campers had been so thrilled to see a star perform live that they failed to see the merit of Megan’s performance. “I never should have entered.”

  She tried to give Megan the pin, but Megan merely laughed off the gesture, as if she weren’t the least disturbed by the unfairness of the competition. Her refusal to become resentful only made Julia feel worse, and that unsettled her. After all, she had trampled over her competitors as long as she had been in Hollywood. More than once, she had stolen other actresses’ roles through conniving and manipulation. She had destroyed rivals’ careers by anonymously revealing their addictions to the media and had alienated more than one costar with her insistence on top billing. Many times Julia had deserved to lose, then reveled when she managed through luck or subterfuge to come out on top. But now, as the quilters bid each other good night and went off to their rooms, she felt oddly empty. Where was that familiar sense of triumph after a victory?

  Clutching the pin in her fist, she went upstairs to sleep so she wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.

  On Friday morning, Vinnie waited, watching the clock, until she couldn’t wait any longer. She dialed Adam’s number and hoped she wouldn’t wake him.

  “Hello?” he said groggily after the fifth ring.

  “Good morning, honey,” she said brightly. “Did I wake you?”

  “Nana?” In the background she heard bedsprings creak. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, dear, I just wanted to be sure you’re planning to pick me up from quilt camp tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” he said through a yawn. “I’ll be there around eleven.”

  “Could you make it any earlier?” Vinnie glanced at the door as if someone might overhear. “Around ten, maybe?”

  “I thought camp wasn’t over that early.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Don’t you have that special farewell breakfast? Why do you want to leave early?”

  “I don’t want to leave early,” she said impatiently. “Goodness, Adam, can’t you just do as you’re told? Be here by ten or I’ll—just be here by ten.”

  She hung up the phone before he could ask any more questions. That young man had a way of sneaking the truth out of her.

  Friday passed so swiftly that before Megan knew it, her last full day of quilt camp was over. That evening, a comedy improv group comprised of students from nearby Waterford College put on an entertaining show, but the campers’ laughter was not as joyous as it would have been earlier in the week or even a day before. Already Megan felt nostalgic for camp, which was too soon coming to an end. She missed Robby, but part of her wished that she could stay at the elegant manor for another week of quilting and fun with her new friends.

  After the show, Sylvia announced that the final breakfast would be served on the cornerstone patio, where they had held the Candlelight ceremony. “We’ll have one last good chat before you leave,” she said. “Bring something for show-and-tell.”

  Julia looked dubious. “Show-and-tell?” she said in an undertone as the campers left the room and headed up the stairs. “As in grammar school?”

  “Don’t be such a wet blanket,” Vinnie teased. “You’re never too old for show-and-tell.”

  Megan suppressed a smile. She wondered how long it had been since someone had dared to tease the great Julia Merchaud.

  Megan bid the others good night and went to her room to pack, but within a few minutes, she began to feel lonely. She set her suitcase aside and went down the hallway to Donna’s room, but before she could knock on the door, it opened. “I was just about to come to your room,” Donna exclaimed. “Come on in.”

  “I can’t believe camp is over already,” Megan said, dropping dejectedly into a chair. “I feel like we just got here.”

  Donna agreed, then settled in on the bed across from Megan. They talked for a while about how much the week had meant to them, then began to gossip about some of the other members of their internet quilting newsgroup. They were in near hysterics recalling a flame war about off-topic posts when a knock sounded on the door. Grace poked her head in and demanded to know what was so funny. By the time Megan finished recounting the tale, their threefold laughter elicited yet another knock.

  “Come in,” they shouted together.

  Vinnie peeked in. When she saw them, her face brightened. “Ooh, a party,” she exclaimed, and quickly ducked back outside again. In a moment she returned with a grocery bag. “We can’t have a party without refreshments.”

  “You brought all this from home?” Megan said, eyeing the tins of homemade cookies, the bags of popcorn, and the jars of nuts.

  “I thought I might get hungry on the drive.”

  “Where were you driving from, Alaska?” Donna asked, helping herself to a few chocolate chip cookies.

  “Ohio, wise guy,” Vinnie said, taking a jar of cashews for herself. “You know, all we’re missing are a few Chippendales dancers and this could be a real party.”

  Just then someone knocked on the door.

  “Vinnie, you didn’t,” Grace exclaimed.

  Vinnie’s face went nearly as white as her hair. “Oh, my goodness. I didn’t mean it.” Her look of genuine shock set the others laughing even harder than before. When Donna finally managed to greet the unknown visitor, Julia opened the door warily. She stood for a moment taking in the scene of half-hysterical quilters, a quilt block and needle in her hand.

  “I was hoping you could help me with this,” she said to Donna. “Maybe I’ll see you in the morning.” She started to shut the door, but Donna jumped to her feet and pulled her inside. When Julia stammered something about making an early night of it, the others drowned out her protests. Reluctantly, she perched on the bed and showed them the Whig Rose block that was giving her so much trouble. Calming themselves for her sake, each inspected the block and offered suggestions for improving her appliqué stitch. When Julia was ready to begin, Grace sat beside her on the bed and watched as Julia put their ideas into practice.

  They chatted as Julia worked, alternating between comical and serious topics. They talked about the families and problems they had left behind at home and would be returning to the next day. Somehow, knowing she would probably never see these women again pained Megan, yet it freed her to be more open than she ordinarily would have been. As she told them about Keith, for the first time Megan didn’t feel that she had to apologize for not being stronger, for not already filling up—with work and friends and new love—the hole he had left in her life. She was so grateful for her friends’ acceptance that she wished they had had this talk earlier, so that she would have had more time to savor their friendship before they parted. But she also
sensed, as the night turned into early morning, that a special closeness bound them, something almost magical. Perhaps they couldn’t have talked this way on any other night.

  Donna’s alarm clock announced that morning had arrived all too soon. She was not a night owl by any stretch of the imagination and knew she would suffer all day for her late night. She simply couldn’t have closed down the impromptu party, though, and since no one had volunteered to be the first to leave, the festivities had stretched on into the early morning hours. Even after she was alone, Donna couldn’t drop off to sleep right away. Her thoughts and her heart were too full.

  She met the others on the cornerstone patio for breakfast. The day promised to be warm and sunny, but Donna’s mood was dark. She missed her family, but camp had been so much more special than she had expected, and she couldn’t bear to see it end. She wondered if she would ever again have a week full of such perfect moments.

  After breakfast, the campers gathered in a circle as they had the first night of camp, this time for show-and-tell. Each quilter showed something she had made that week and shared her favorite memory of Elm Creek Manor. Even the beginning quilters proudly displayed their handiwork. Julia held up her Friendship Star block, and seemed genuinely pleased when the other campers praised her piecing skills. When Sylvia prompted her to name her favorite memory, she hesitated before looking right at Donna and saying, “The kindness of other quilters who were so willing to share their knowledge. I can honestly say it’s been a long time since I’ve experienced such generosity.”

  Donna was surprised and pleased to know that Julia had appreciated her simple lessons so much, but she couldn’t help feeling sorry for Julia and wondering why someone so successful apparently had so little kindness in her life.

  Vinnie showed off a half-finished Double Pinwheel quilt top she had worked on in her Quick Piecing classes, and declared that her favorite memory was her surprise birthday party. “That’s what you said last year,” Sylvia said, her eyes glinting with merriment, “and the year before. It’s time for you to come up with something new.”

  Vinnie pursed her lips and thought, then said that if Sylvia wouldn’t let her use her real favorite memory, she would have to go with the food. “It was especially good this year,” she protested when everyone laughed.

  For her turn, Megan held up an exquisite Feathered Star miniature quilt, only fourteen inches square. When the other quilters marveled at the precision of her piecing, Megan passed the quilt around the circle. “When you see it up close you’ll spot the mistakes,” she said, but everyone declared that they couldn’t find a single one. When she held the quilt, Donna couldn’t find even the smallest tip of a triangle out of place or truncated, and she shook her head and announced that Megan was being too critical of herself.

  “She should win a prize for being the toughest judge of her own work,” Vinnie hinted to Sylvia. “Maybe one of those Elm Creek Quilts pins.” But Sylvia merely laughed.

  Donna had brought two items to show: the Whig Rose block she had completed in the appliqué workshop and the color gradations chart she had made in Color Theory. She was especially proud of the latter, since her color choices tended to be conservative, and the chart had inspired her to be more daring. “My favorite memory is easy,” she said. “Meeting all my wonderful new friends.”

  Grace went last, and, remembering her confession during the Candle-light ceremony, everyone waited with anxious expectation to see what she would show them. To Donna’s surprise, she held up not a small block or an exercise from Color Theory, but a small quilt bordered with Ohio Star blocks. In the center was a photo-transfer block of Vinnie sitting in the garden with a quilt on her lap. “Thanks to Summer and Sylvia—in fact, thanks to all of you, for your encouragement—I finally broke through my quilter’s block. Happy birthday, Vinnie.”

  “For me?” Vinnie’s eyes shone as she took the quilt. “Why, it’s lovely. Ohio Star blocks, and I’m from Ohio!”

  “That’s why I chose them.”

  “Oh, my.” Vinnie was speechless for a moment as she held the quilt up to admire it, then hugged it to her chest. “I’ll treasure it always.”

  “What about your favorite memory?” another quilter prompted.

  Grace smiled at Vinnie admiring her gift. “I think this is it.”

  Everyone laughed, but a little sadly, because now every quilter had taken her turn. The week of camp was over.

  Donna was reluctant to leave, so she lingered on the cornerstone patio with her friends as the other campers exchanged hugs and tearful good-byes. She and Megan would keep in touch, of course, but what of the others? She would never know if Grace would continue to triumph over her quilter’s block or if Julia would convince her producer that she was an expert quilter. She would never know if Vinnie would find her grandson a new girlfriend. In turn, they would never know if she had convinced Lindsay to stay in school, and when the wedding came and she needed their support, they would be miles away, scattered around the country when she needed them most.

  “I’m going to miss you,” Donna said, embracing each of them in turn. “Without you, I don’t think I ever would have found the courage to face Lindsay. I wish … I wish we could all be there to help each other with all the problems waiting back home.”

  She looked around the circle of friends and knew at once that each felt the same way.

  “A few days ago we all said we were coming back next year,” Donna said. “Let’s promise each other right now that we will, that we won’t let anything stand in the way.”

  The others nodded, Julia a bit hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure Donna meant her, too. “A year is a long time,” she said. “We don’t know where we’ll be in a year.”

  “I know where I’ll be,” Vinnie declared. “I’ll be right here celebrating my eighty-third birthday and congratulating myself on finding my grandson a new sweetheart.”

  She succeeded in making them laugh, and Grace added, “Well, then, I’ll be here showing you all my latest projects.”

  Julia gave them a small smile. “And I suppose I’ll be here telling you how filming went.”

  “Oh, you must,” Vinnie exclaimed. “I have to know how everything turns out. That goes for all of you—I can’t bear thinking that I might not know how everything turns out. Donna’s daughter’s wedding, Megan and little Robby—”

  Megan looked resolute. “By this time next year, I promise I’ll have done everything humanly possible to bring Keith back into his life.”

  “We won’t have to face our problems alone,” Grace said. “We’ll be with each other in spirit.”

  “We’ll keep in touch,” Megan said. “Whenever we need encouragement, we can write, or call, or email. Are the rest of you on the internet?”

  Grace nodded, but Julia shook her head and Vinnie said, “Heavens, no.”

  “You have to get online,” Megan insisted. “It’s the best way to stay in touch.”

  Donna, usually the most optimistic of the group, felt her spirits drop. “People always say they’ll keep in touch, but they usually don’t.”

  “We’ll be different,” Vinnie said stoutly.

  Donna wished she could believe her. They might leave Elm Creek Manor with the best of intentions, but as the weeks passed and they fell into the patterns of ordinary life, they might forget how special—how magical—the week they had spent together had been. If they failed to nurture it, their friendship might become nothing more than a fond memory, something to reflect upon and cherish when leafing through an old scrapbook rather than something vibrant and alive.

  “We need a symbol, something to remind us of our promise,” she heard herself say.

  “I have a wonderful idea,” Vinnie said. “Let’s make a challenge quilt.”

  “A what?” Julia asked.

  “A challenge quilt. We’ll take a piece of fabric and divide it into equal shares. We’ll each piece a block from it, and next year, we’ll meet at camp and sew them into a quilt.”


  “The challenge comes from being required to use a particular fabric rather than being free to choose whatever you like,” Grace told Julia. “But sometimes there are other restrictions. Should we have any?”

  “How about this,” Megan said. “We can’t start working on our block until we take steps to solve our problems. That will keep us from procrastinating.”

  On our quilt blocks or on solving our problems? Donna wondered. She knew which project she’d rather face.

  “All right, then,” Julia said. “As soon as the first day of filming is over, if I haven’t been fired, I’ll start piecing my block.”

  Vinnie clasped her hands, delighted. “Then I’ll start mine the first time I ask Adam if he’s heard from Natalie and he says, ‘Natalie who?’”

  They all laughed, and Donna felt her spirits rising. For the first time, she felt that even though they would be scattered cross-country, they would remain close friends.

  “Cross-country,” she murmured, then added in a louder voice, “That’s what we are, the Cross-Country Quilters.”

  “A name makes it official,” Vinnie declared. “How can we fail?”

  After they had finished packing, the Cross-Country Quilters gathered in the parking lot for a final good-bye. When Megan’s car was loaded up and they were waiting outside the manor for Vinnie’s grandson and Julia’s limousine—in which she had invited Donna to join her for the drive to the airport—Vinnie brought out her bag of quilting supplies. “We still need to choose a fabric,” she said. “Who will do the honors?”

  “I’ll pick,” Donna said eagerly. She dug around in the bag and laughed. “How about this?” She pulled out a print of black-and-white cows grazing in a meadow.

  Julia looked alarmed, and Megan said, “No way.”

  Donna pouted, but she returned the fabric to the bag and tried again. “How about this?”