by Senft, Adina
Cut each square from corner to corner to form 2 triangles, giving you 20 triangles total. You’ll have some triangles left over; use them in the next block.
Step 2: Dark Triangles
Fold your dark contrast fabric right sides together, selvedges together.
Again, cutting across the grain, cut a strip 3 inches wide.
Cut one 3-inch square across the strip (remembering that you have to cut only once because there are two layers of fabric).
Cut each square from corner to corner to form 2 triangles, giving you 4 triangles total.
Step 3: Light Triangles
Fold your light contrast fabric right sides together, selvedges together.
Again, cutting across the grain, cut a strip 3 inches wide.
Cut three 3-inch squares across the strip (remembering that you have to cut only once because there are two layers of fabric).
Cut each square from corner to corner to form 2 triangles, giving you 12 triangles total. You’ll have some triangles left over; use them in the next block.
Step 4: Squares
Cut a 2¾-inch strip from each of your background and dark contrast fabrics.
Cut two 2¾-inch squares across the strip of background fabric to make 4 squares total.
Cut one 2¾-inch square across the strip of dark contrast fabric to make 2 squares total.
Step 5: Bicolor Light Squares
Matching the long sides, with right sides together, pin the 6 light triangles to 6 of the background triangles.
Sew the triangles together along the long side in a continuous chain (meaning sew the triangles one after the other in a sort of kite string, not cutting the threads in between) to make a chain of 6 bicolored squares. Be careful that you don’t actually stitch the squares to each other.
Cut the threads and press the seams toward the darker fabric. You should have 6 bicolor light squares.
Step 6: Bicolor Dark Squares
Matching the long sides, with right sides together, pin the 4 dark triangles to the remaining 4 background triangles.
Sew the triangles together along the long side in a continuous chain (meaning sew the triangles one after the other, not cutting the threads in between) to make a chain of 4 bicolored squares. Again, be careful that you don’t actually stitch the squares to each other.
Cut the threads and press the seams toward the darker fabric. You should have 4 bicolor dark squares.
Step 8: Row 1
Sew one background square to the light triangle side of one bicolor light square, as shown.
Sew the background fabric side of a bicolor dark square to the light triangle side of a bicolor light square, as shown.
Press seams toward the darker color.
Sew the background triangle side of the first pair to the dark triangle side of the second pair, as shown, and press.
Step 9: Row 2
Sew the light triangle side of a bicolor light square to a background square, as shown.
Sew the dark triangle side of a bicolor dark square to a dark square, as shown.
Press seams toward the darker color.
Sew the light square side of the first square to the dark square side of the second pair, as shown, and press.
Step 10: Row 3
Sew the dark triangle side of a bicolor dark square to a dark square, as shown.
Sew the light triangle side of a bicolor light square to a background square, as shown.
Press seams toward the darker color.
Sew the dark square side of the first pair to the background square side of the second pair, as shown, and press.
Step 11: Row 4
Sew the light triangle side of a bicolor light square to the background side of a bicolor dark square.
Sew the light triangle side of a bicolor light square to a background square.
Press seams toward the darker color.
Sew the dark triangle side of the first pair to the background triangle side of the second pair, as shown, and press.
Step 12: Assemble the Block
Press the seams of each row in opposite directions so they lie flat when sewn together. (i.e., for Row 1 press right, left, right; for Row 2 press left, right, left; etc.)
Sew your rows together, as shown. Match your seams as closely as you can.
Step 13: Isht Gut!
Admire your work (without indulging in Hochmut, of course).
Make 14 more blocks.
Reading Group Guide
Amelia, Emma, and Carrie have been best friends since childhood and talk everything out with one another. Do you have relationships like this in your life?
What kinds of things do you talk about with your closest friends? What do you keep to yourself ?
Amelia’s parents, Isaac and Ruth Lehman, keep strictly to the old ways. Do you think it was difficult for them to advise Amelia to stick to the tried and true in her treatment?
The bishop advises Amelia to stay home for traditional treatment and not to try anything new, even though it might have helped her. If you had been in Amelia’s position, what might you have done?
Amelia’s greatest struggle is with independent thinking in a community that values humility of mind and obedience. Was she successful in curbing her independence?
The Amish believe that the woman’s place is in the home. What did you think of the way Amelia ran both her husband’s shop and her home?
Why did Amelia turn down Eli Fischer’s offer of help?
The Amish put greater value on what people do than what they say. Are you someone who talks things out, or do you tend to go straight into action?
Emma struggles with being single, and Carrie struggles with being childless. If you have experienced either of these struggles, how did you handle it?
If you had a chance to live as the Amish do for one week, without electricity or cars and always in submission to authority, would you do it? Why or why not?
Watch for Emma’s story,
The Hidden Life,
coming in June 2012 from FaithWords.
Turn the page for an excerpt!
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
—Psalm 51:6 (KJV)
In the absence of a husband or children, the written word was pretty much the only way a woman could prove she existed. Of course, God knew the existence of every sparrow and had numbered the hairs on her head, but to Emma Stolzfus this knowledge didn’t hold the comfort it used to. Not when her thirtieth birthday had come and gone and she was left staring at the wasteland of spinsterhood on the other side.
Had she said anything like this aloud, her mother would have suggested in her humble but inflexible way that she plant something in the wasteland and make it yield some fruit. Well, Emma was doing that very thing. She loosened the strings of her black away bonnet and pulled open the glass door to the Whinburg post office. She laid the large manila envelope on the counter.
“Sending off another article?”
Janelle Baum had told Emma once that reading the addresses on people’s mail was as good as reading their diaries. People sent care packages to their boys in the Middle East. They returned clothes that didn’t fit. They sent each other presents. And Janelle found out about all of it, mostly because for the foreign packages you had to say what was in there, and for the domestic ones she’d act interested and ask nosy questions until you told her.
Emma nodded. “Family Life this time.” Which was written right there on the front, so there was no point in trying to hide it.
“Too bad you Old Order folks can’t have the Internet,” Janelle said. “It’d be a lot faster, sending things back and forth.”
“I wouldn’t want to put you out of a job.” Emma smiled, paid the postage, and left, feeling as though she’d put one over on Janelle at last. If Family Life depended on electronic submissions, there wouldn’t be much of a magazine, since its audience and its staff were mostly Amish. She got
along just fine without the Internet or a computer. Her old Smith-Corona worked no matter what the weather did to the power poles running down the side of the highway, and if that wasn’t an advantage, she didn’t know what was.
She untied Ajax’s reins from the rail in front of the post office and patted his nose. “Patient boy. You weren’t expecting to go all the way to Strasburg today, were you? Now we can go to Amelia’s, and I’ll put you in her nice warm barn to visit with Daisy for a couple of hours.”
Ajax snorted and allowed her to back him around before she climbed into the buggy, pulled the heavy wool blanket across her legs to keep out the chilly air, and shook the reins over his back.
What nosy Janelle didn’t know was that Emma had two envelopes to mail, but she’d gone five miles over to Strasburg to send the other one. Its address would have told a tale she wasn’t willing for anyone to know, and the postal employees in the bigger town didn’t know her. Why should they care that an Amish spinster was sending an envelope to New York City? Or that it was addressed to the coordinator of a fiction contest?
Emma gulped and tried to calm the sickening swoop in her stomach at the thought of her envelope, probably already on a truck and heading down the highway.
She took a deep breath and let the cold air blow away her nerves. Winter might have eased its grip on Lancaster County just a little, but it hadn’t given up yet. Here they were at the beginning of March, and you’d think it was still January. Emma eased onto Whinburg’s main street and kept Ajax under tight rein until they were out on the county highway, which was straight and offered the cars coming up behind her plenty of warning that there was a gray buggy in the road, even if its color matched both concrete and sky.
The men were probably gathered even now in Moses Yoder’s barn, leaning on bales of hay and anxiously watching the sky for signs of change in the weather. If the planting was delayed, it would throw the whole year out. From her point of view, there was an even worse consequence.
Wedding season would go on even longer than it already had.
No, she wouldn’t think about wedding season. That was worse than thinking about her envelope. About the sweet young brides and awkward grooms, about the oceans of food, about the gatherings of everyone in the Gmee and neighboring communities—during every one of which at least one person would ask her when her turn was going to come.
She’d stopped coming up with witty answers years ago. Now she was reduced to a sickly smile and a swift return to whatever task she was performing. It was safer to become one of the many pairs of helping hands at a wedding. That way you always had a reason to disappear and no one questioned you about it.
And now here was her best friend Amelia Beiler putting on purple instead of black and looking at courtship a second time. If she didn’t love Amelia so much, Emma would be tempted to give in to despair, which was a sin. Everyone knew, even if no one said so, that there were more women than men in the church. Much as her heart was gladdened that Amelia’s smile now held genuine happiness instead of the wistful sadness of the last year or so, in the dark of the night Emma allowed herself to think, It just isn’t fair for you to have two and me to have none.
Which was ridiculous and selfish and—for that brief second—a betrayal of the friendship they’d treasured for two decades. In the practical light of morning, Emma knew herself to be a healthier person than that. But practicality didn’t have much say in the middle of the night.
She pulled on the reins, and Ajax slowed to take the turn into Amelia’s lane. The cure for dissatisfaction was to remember that the good Gott held her life in His hands to use for His own purpose. And if that purpose was that she should care for Mamm in her old age, then she, Emma, should rejoice that she had good, rewarding work to do.
What would happen to her after Mamm passed on to be with God, she didn’t know. Would she be permitted to live in the Daadi Haus on her own? Karen’s John had aging parents also, and it wasn’t too far-fetched to imagine he might want to bring them here. Her practical side told her that Karen would welcome someone in the upstairs bedroom to give her some help with the children and the household, since there was a fifth baby on the way. But somehow living under Karen’s thumb in the big, noisy farmhouse when she’d learned to appreciate the quiet of the little Daadi Haus wasn’t very appealing.
And most important of all, where would she write?
I should never have mailed that envelope. What was I thinking? I have an eighth-grade education, and I’ve never been farther from home than Lebanon County. What do I know about the world that smart folks from the city didn’t learn when they were babies? They’ll laugh at my pages. Of course they will.
She would put it out of her mind. She’d done what she’d done, and now she knew how foolish it had been. So when the letter from the laughing people came, telling her that some bright young city person had won the contest, she’d accept it as being only right, and that would be that.
No one would know but herself.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Glossary
Crosses and Losses Quilt Instructions
Reading Group Guide
A Preview of The Hidden Life
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Shelley Bates
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: September 2011
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ISBN: 978-1-455-50564-7