“Oh, she’ll want you to visit,” Allan assured her. “Mother loves crossing swords with people and you two do it best. But it’ll be a paying position from now on. It’s no picnic visiting Mother.”
“I didn’t mind,” Margaret assured him. She had enjoyed the time with Jean and Mrs. Ferguson, listening to them fight while she worked on her quilt.
“Nevertheless, that’s what I’ve decided. A paying position. Jean can save up for nursing school, and, Margaret, maybe you’ll be able to get some material to finish your quilt. I’ll work out the details with Mother.”
“Oh.” Jean reached down, grabbed the hem of her coat, and tugged hard. There was a ripping sound, then she held out a piece of black material to Margaret. “Is this any good for your quilt? I can give you more if you like,” she said eagerly, reaching for the hem again.
“This is just fine, thank you,” Margaret assured her hastily. Jean would tear her coat to pieces! “There’ll be a remembrance of you in my quilt.”
“Well, don’t finish it too fast,” Jean said. “I wouldn’t want you leaving soon.”
Margaret shook her head. “The farm isn’t ours anymore. I know that now. And I know the quilt won’t take us back to Saskatchewan. That was just a foolish idea I had.”
“What will you do with your quilt?” Jean asked.
“I don’t know,” Margaret replied.
Allan began to walk off. “Jean, I’m going to walk you home. I want to talk to your mother about the—job I’m offering you.” His face momentarily darkened, then his eyes twinkled again. “And, Margaret, you better head home, as I said your father is looking for you, and someone else is, too.” He smiled secretly.
“Who?” Margaret asked.
“Just go,” Allan told her.
Hurrying along the streets, Margaret thought hard about her Flying Geese quilt. She had been so sure finishing it would take her back to Saskatchewan. Her feet slowed. Well, maybe it would still bring someone home. Edward. He might be in France by now, up at the front, cold and wet. She’d send him the quilt to keep him warm, and maybe in time it would bring him back to her family.
Happily, Margaret pushed open the door to the cottage, the wind catching it and slamming it with a resounding bang.
“Hush!” a soft voice said. “You’ll wake the baby.”
“Mama!” Margaret threw herself into her mother’s arms.
Chapter 20
A gentle shake woke Margaret from a sound sleep to find her father bending over her.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked sleepily. “Mama? Baby Hope?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” her father assured her. “Get dressed quietly so you don’t wake Evie. There’s something I want to show you.”
Margaret crept down the stairs in her stocking feet and paused in the kitchen to tie on her boots, smiling as she heard Baby Hope’s mewling cries from her parents’ bedroom and her mother’s soothing voice. She followed her father out the kitchen door into the pink spring dawn. The air held a chill, but she saw the yellow of a crocus.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” was all she could get out of him.
They walked along quiet morning streets, past sleeping houses with curtains drawn and smoke rising in lazy blue curls from chimneys. Soon they arrived at the bridge over the river. Mr. Brown stopped halfway across. “Now watch,” he said, leaning over the railing.
“What for?”
“Just watch and you’ll see.”
Newly yellow-green willows dipped graceful branches into red and gold sun-touched water. Brown bulrushes mingled with emerald-green growth along the banks. Suddenly, Margaret heard a single, flat honk, then others joining, filling the air with sound. She squinted into the early morning sun to see geese fly low over the river. Wings beat strong and heads strained northward. Spring had arrived.
Quilting is not easy, but if you take time and patience and do the best you can, in the end it will all come together into something beautiful.
Glossary
TEMPLATE: is a pattern for quilt pieces. It is made of plastic or light-weight cardboard. You mark around it, then cut out the shape.
SEAM ALLOWANCE: is the distance between the cut edge of a fabric and the stitching line. Unless indicated otherwise, a .5 cm (¼ inch) seam allowance is always used in quilting.
BORDERS: act as a frame for the pieced blocks.
PIECING: is joining together the cut patches or pieces of material to form a pattern or block.
QUILTING: is done when the quilt top and batting and backing have been sandwiched together (a quilt sandwich). It is done with a short running stitch that goes through all layers.
TYING: is an alternative to quilting, once a quilt sandwich is made. Yarn is run through all three layers and knotted or tied. This is done evenly spaced every 7 cms.
SASHING: are the strips of materials running between the finished quilt blocks to separate and set them together to form a quilt top.
BACKING: is fabric which forms the bottom layer of the quilt.
BATTING: is the filling used between the top and the backing and provides thickness and warmth to the quilt. In the past corn husks, straw, raw cotton, old blankets and worn quilts were used. Today quilters use bonded polyester or cotton batts.
BINDING: is a narrow strip of fabric used to enclose the raw edges of the quilt sandwich.
Make Your Own Flying Geese Coaster
I made my coaster from blue, yellow and white felt, but you can make yours from any colours you want.
YOU’LL NEED:
1 piece each of blue, yellow and white felt
a pencil
scissors
a ruler
a sheet of paper
cereal-box cardboard
white craft glue
pins
needle and thread
INSTRUCTIONS:
1 Measure and cut out a 13 cm (5 inch) large square, a 7.5 cm (3 inch) medium square, and a 6 cm (2½ inch) small square of paper.
2 Glue the squares onto a piece of cereal-box cardboard and cut them out. These are your templates.
3 Use the pencil to trace the large template onto your yellow felt and the medium template onto the blue felt. Trace the small template twice onto the white felt.
4 Cut out the four squares. Cut the blue square and the two white squares corner to corner so you now have six triangles.
5 Place the large yellow square on the table top. Line up the cut edge of one of the blue triangles about .5 cm (¼ inch) above the bottom edge of the large yellow square. Pin it in place.
6 Line up the cut edges of two of the white triangles to the two remaining edges of the blue triangle. Pin them in place.
7 Centre the cut edge of the second blue triangle above the point of the first and follow instruction 6.
8 With a needle and contrasting thread, sew a line .5 cm (¼ inch) along the inside edges of each triangle.
You now have a coaster. To make a whole set of coasters, reuse your templates. You can make a greeting card the same way out of construction or wrapping paper—use your imagination.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER:
About the Author
BARBARA HAWORTH-ATTARD’s 1997 children’s book, Home Child, was published to great critical acclaim, including being shortlisted for the Mr. Christie Book Award; the Silver Birch Award; the Red Cedar Award; and the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction. Film rights have been sold and Barbara is writing the screenplay. Barbara’s other books include Dark of the Moon, TruthSinger and her most recent, Love-Lies-Bleeding.
She lives with her family in London, Ontario.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at harpercollins.ca.
Books by Barbara Haworth-Attard
Dark of the Moon
The Three Wishbells
TruthSinger
Home Child
Buried Treasure
WyndMagic
Love-Lies-Bleeding
A Is for Angst
Theories of Relativity
Forget Me Not
Irish Chain
Copyright
Flying Geese
Copyright © 2002 by Barbara Haworth-Attard.
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
EPub Edition: March 2017 EPub ISBN: 9781443452939
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8
www.harpercollins.ca
Thank you to Judy Ann Sadler for her sharing of her craft expertise, and to the staff of the London Room and the London Public Library for always finding an answer to my questions.
Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for a grant provided to the author.
Nellie McClung quotes courtesy of The London Free Press.
* * *
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Haworth-Attard, Barbara, 1953–Flying geese
ISBN 0-00-648574-X
I. Title.
PS8565.A865F59 2002
jC813'.54
C2002-900568-X
PZ7.H38FL 2002
* * *
OPM 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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