Home for the Holidays

by Rebecca Kelly

  “You don’t have any Christmas lights strung in here,” Laura commented. “Don’t you think it would look more festive if you added something like a lighted star?”

  “We try to keep it exactly as it was two thousand years ago,” Samuel told her. “The lights we save for the house and our tree.”

  “I think it’s marvelous that you do this for the community,” Edwina said as she reached over to pet one of the lambs who had wandered over to the low gate. Missy came to stand and watch the boys with her bright, dark eyes. “How many people come to see the reenactment now?”

  “Several hundred, so we’ve started doing repeat performances spread out over Christmas week,” the farmer said. “We also play host to a number of Christian groups who want to celebrate the real reason for the season. This year we’ll be hosting a choir from Wilkes-Barre who will be filming their performance here for a local cable television station.”

  “Your fifteen minutes of fame,” Jane teased.

  “Rose thought I should wear a suit.” Samuel grinned as he held up the robes his daughter-in-law had sewn. “But lucky for me, the poor shepherds keeping watch over their flocks weren’t able to afford double-breasted jackets.”

  The temperature had dropped so quickly that by the time Samuel, Jane and the group had returned to the farmhouse they were all thoroughly chilled. Rose escorted everyone to the living room for a last, warming cup of spiced cider before the long ride back to the hotel in Potterston. She introduced the group to Vera Humbert, who had stayed to say hello to Jane.

  “These folks are certainly the nicest group we’ve had this year,” Rose said to Jane apart from the others and glanced at Allan. “That gentleman there knows so much about old houses. I’ll wager he would make a wonderful teacher.”

  “I’ve already learned so much listening to him that my head hurts,” Jane admitted with a laugh.

  When Allan asked if he could get a glass of water from the kitchen in order to take some of his allergy tablets, Jane decided to go with him.

  She passed along the compliment Rose had given him, and then asked, “What made you decide to retire, Allan?”

  “I saved a little every week when I was working so that I could retire early,” Allan said as he took out his pills. “All of our friends were doing it, selling their houses and moving to places like Florida to live on golf courses and spend their golden years in the sun.”

  She got him a glass of water from the sink. “But you’re still living here in Pennsylvania.”

  “My wife and I aren’t much for golf.” He paused to swallow the tablets and chase them down with the water. “I haven’t done much but putter around the house since I left the firm, but I intend to write a book about architecture someday.”

  “Why don’t you write one now?”

  “I have this problem. Every time I sit down to do it, my mind goes completely blank and stays that way.” He chuckled. “I was always better at sketching and making presentation models than I was at writing.”

  “Have you ever thought about teaching?”

  He emptied the glass in the sink. “Mrs. Bellwood was very kind to say that about me, but I don’t see myself as the type who would make a very good instructor.”

  “That’s not what I hear from my sisters, and tonight you taught us a lot about this house.”

  “Oh, that was nothing.” He made an offhand gesture. “I just like talking about architecture.”

  “But that’s what teaching is,” she said, “getting a bunch of youngsters together and talking with them about what you know. I suspect it would be a lot more fun for you than puttering around the house.”

  He seemed taken aback by that. “Maybe it would be.”

  When Jane and Allan returned to the group, they found Rose answering questions about her unique decorations.

  “I can’t recall ever seeing flowers on a Christmas tree or stars like these, Mrs. Bellwood,” Ted said, nodding toward the paper stars hanging from the beams. “Are they European?”

  “Those are Moravian stars, which are traditional Pennsylvania Dutch decorations.” Rose picked up a small, plain-looking wooden box from a collection of them on a side table and opened it. A tiny mechanism inside whirred into life and played the opening bars of “Away in a Manger.” “And these are my caroling music boxes. Neither Samuel nor I are musically talented, so when the children were little, we would wind these up and play the tunes while they sang the songs.”

  “My family could have used some of those when I was a kid,” Jane said. She was tone-deaf and as a result could not sing on key, something that confounded her more musical sisters. “They might have drowned me out.”

  “These flowers on your tree are real,” Laura Lattimer said as she tested the petal of a rose.

  “So are the nuts.” Rose exchanged an amused glance with Jane before she added, “That’s another tradition in this part of the country. The Amish started it, I believe, because they don’t hold with commercialism of any kind, especially of the holidays. Their Christmas trees are usually decorated only with fruit, nuts and live flowers.”

  Vera asked Rose if she had shown the group some of her antique Amish quilts. “Rose started collecting quilts the same time I did,” she told Jane. “It’s how we became friends.”

  “We very nearly didn’t,” the farmer’s wife said. “At first, all we did was try to outbid each other at auctions.”

  Vera and Rose took the group through the rest of the rooms on the first floor, each of which had at least two quilts on display. Some hung like tapestries, others were folded neatly on standing racks. All were made in traditional patchwork patterns.

  “Most of my quilts are at least one hundred years old,” Rose told the group. “Old quilts can’t take much direct exposure to sunlight, so to keep them from fading, I rotate them every other month with others I have safely stored.”

  “Vera is quite a quilt historian,” Jane told the group. Earlier in the fall, Fred’s wife had saved an old quilt she and her sisters had inadvertently thrown out, and had given them a great deal of information about its significance.

  “After Fred and the girls, they are my passion,” she admitted.

  “We try to get her to speak at all the big guild meetings,” Rose said. “I know I’ve learned more from her than from any book I’ve ever read.”

  “Well, I’m going to take advantage of that,” Edwina said. “When did people start making quilts, Vera?”

  “Quilt-making dates back to ancient Egypt, and knights used to wear quilted padding under their armor to protect their skin, but quilts in America are only about three hundred years old.”

  Rose told them of the trip that she, Vera and her quilting guild had made to the Smithsonian the year before, to see quilts made as far back as 1780. “I thought the curator would never let us out of there once Vera identified a quilt for which they had been trying to find a pattern name.”

  “What made quilts so popular here in America?” Laura asked. “They’re only bed covers.”

  “The first American colonists had a very hard time of it,” Vera told the younger woman. “Fabric, thread and needles were expensive because they had to be brought over from England. Most households produced their own woolen homespun, as cotton wouldn’t become available until after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Mostly the women of the time made their clothes from imported fabrics like linen and silks, or their own woven wool. They made their quilts from the same materials.”

  “I thought the women of that period made their quilts from worn clothing,” Edwina said.

  “Scrap quilts made of clothing came much later, during the Civil War, when blockades and fighting kept disrupting supply lines,” Vera said. “Until the war most women chose to weave blankets rather than make quilts. During the war, even homespun was needed for clothing and any scraps were considered too dear to waste.”

  Vera helped Rose take out some of her quilts to show them different styles and techniques. “When qu
ilting became more popular in the nineteenth century, it became a skill young women were expected to learn. You can see from this Ohio Star quilt”—she unfolded a large, blue-and-red quilt with patchwork that formed eight-pointed stars—“how the quilting was in straight lines, or what we call ‘in the ditch.’”

  Vera shared her knowledge about the period after the Civil War, when the sewing machine made its impact upon quilting. Women began making scrap quilts from the silk dresses they had once worn.

  “The first sewing machine was designed as a cobbler’s tool, to make shoes,” she told the group. “Isaac Singer designed a sewing machine with a foot treadle that allowed the sewer to keep her hands free to move the fabric under the needle. He made the machine affordable, too, so that nearly every woman in America could have one in her home. Since machine sewing was a hundred times faster than hand sewing, quilt making became far easier and more popular.”

  “What sort of quilts were made after the war, Mrs. Humbert?” Edwina asked.

  “Wool quilts were always a favorite, because people needed to keep warm. But the sewing machine allowed women to sew more for pleasure, and they began making what we call art quilts. Redwork, or white quilts with embroidered pictures in red thread, were all the rage at one point, and so too were crazy quilts, which were randomly pieced fancy fabrics with embroidery on the seams and patches. Quilters began embellishing their patchwork with all kinds of beads, fancy stitching and flowers made of silk ribbon or cut tuft work. Some quilters even painted little pictures on their quilts.”

  “I’ve always liked the quilts from the thirties,” Rose said as she took out two examples from that era, a classic double wedding ring, and a tumbling blocks quilt to show them the improvement in fabric dyes. “This is when women were able to get more pastel and candy-colored fabrics. Dyes stopped running and fading, and prints became more elaborate.”

  “Your quilts were made by Amish or Mennonite quilt makers, weren’t they, Rose?” Jane asked.

  “Mostly, yes, although I do have a few Amish-style quilts now that I’ve made myself or with my quilting guild. Hand quilting takes time and patience,” she explained, “and Amish quilt patterns may look simple, but they’re very demanding pieces to make.”

  Rose told them how in the late seventeenth century a Swiss farmer named Joseph Amman had convinced many Mennonites to leave their church and form the founding families of the Amish religion.

  “Bishop Amman wanted to preserve their heritage and follow the religious ideal of living a plain, simple life as they interpreted it from the Bible. Soon after the Amish split, they came to America and settled first in Lancaster County, then all over this region of Pennsylvania.”

  Rose explained how quilting became both an art form and a method of socialization for Amish women. “Their quilts were always made entirely by hand. Although the quilts are almost always in solid colors and very basic patchwork designs, the designs themselves were never affected by the outside world. There are women in Amish country today who are making quilts from the same templates that their great-great-grandmothers used.”

  “Completely untouched by time,” Ted said, snapping several photos.

  “Even when Isaac Singer threw himself into marketing the first treadle sewing machine to every woman in America, very few Amish women actually bought them,” Rose said.

  Edwina frowned. “But I thought it saved them so much time.”

  Vera grinned. “A sewing machine is a modern contraption—the use of which is forbidden by their religious beliefs—but to tell you the truth, I think Amish women knew their quilts were spectacular because of the hand stitching.”

  Jane was surprised to hear that while the rest of American quilters were indulging in lavish silk and satin crazy quilts during the Victorian era, Amish woman remained faithful to their cotton and wool quilts and only gradually adopted simple patchwork patterns.

  “Quilting brought women together and kept them united as a community within the Amish faith,” Rose said. “They only adopted new ideas and methods as a group, never as individuals. That’s why it took so long for them to introduce patterns like Sunshine and Shadow, which is arguably the most popular and recognizable of Amish patterns, into their designs.”

  She went to the next quilt, which featured bold primary colored fans against a black background. “This Grandmother’s Fan is one of the more radical Amish quilt designs of the thirties, and yet it still incorporates the predominant use of black and disdains prints for solids. The quilters used solid fabrics because some considered printed material a vanity. Although truth be told, I think they also knew how beautifully solid fabrics showed off their quilting stitches.”

  “What I think is fun is how they made a party out of their activity,” Jane said, “getting together to work on a quilt as a group.”

  Rose nodded. “Since Amish women did most of their quilting during the winter months, it also served as a reason to get out of the house at a time of the year when they normally would not have an opportunity to socialize outside church.”

  Vera told them how the celebration of the nation’s Bicentennial in 1976 had sparked an interest in quilts, as Americans refocused on the art forms of the past and discovered the unique qualities of Amish quilting. “It was then that Amish women began making some quilts to sell in addition to the ones they made for gifts and family use.”

  “Have you sold any of your work, Mrs. Bellwood?” Laura asked.

  “No, unfortunately, I don’t have that many completed,” she admitted. “Even now that my youngest is in college, working the farm is still a full-time job. As a result I can only do a little bit here and there in the evenings.”

  “Rose also volunteers at the school where I teach,” Vera put in. “She comes in once a week to work with the members of the local 4-H and she teaches a regular craft class.”

  “I teach fourth graders,” Edwina said, clearly pleased to learn that Fred’s wife shared her profession.

  As the schoolteacher related an amusing tale from her classroom, Jane noticed that Laura Lattimer had drifted away from the group and was closely studying one of Rose’s folded quilts with a nine-patch design in gold, brown and olive green.

  When she went over to her, Laura gave Jane a somewhat hostile look. “Let me guess. She doesn’t want to sell them and I shouldn’t ask.”

  Jane smiled. “Wow, you’re a good guesser. Want to tell me how much I weigh or when my birthday is?”

  “I get how protective you are of each other in this town,” the interior decorator said, sounding exasperated. “I’ve had three straight days of it. You needn’t fuss.”

  Jane tried to think of something diplomatic to say as she glanced down at the quilt. “That olive green probably isn’t your color anyway.”

  “No, but it would be perfect for a retiring Army general who is moving back from overseas next month and wants his house in perfect order.” The younger woman sighed heavily. “I’m no different from any of your other tourists, you know. Except that I paid to come here.”

  “I’m sorry, maybe I misunderstood the whole meaning of this tour,” Jane tagged on. “I thought it was to explore homes with classic architecture during the holidays, not clean out the owners.”

  “Point taken.” Oddly, Laura didn’t seem insulted. “Look, honey, in my business, you have to be a power buyer or you don’t survive. Interior decorators are a dime a dozen in the city, and I have to fight to keep every client. Part of doing that is getting quality merchandise for the lowest price possible.”

  Jane could sympathize with her on a certain level as the restaurant business wasn’t all that different. “You’re only looking in one direction, Laura. Private owners aren’t the only resources available to you here.”

  “Your little shops are charming, I’ll grant you,” she said, making a casual gesture, “but I need household furnishings and accessories, not trinket boxes and home-baked blackberry pies.”

  “Ah, but you’re not from this area, so
you don’t know the many avenues to serious household stuff. Take quilts, for example. You’re only a few miles away from the heart of Amish country.” Jane pointed to the window. “If you take that road and head north, in no time you’ll see Amish farmhouses with quilts hanging on the front porch rails every mile or so.”

  “I’ve heard about that. Are dryers against their religion or something?” She peered at the whirls of Rose’s hand stitching again.

  “A quilt hanging on the porch means that the lady of the house has handmade quilts to sell.” Jane smiled as Laura’s gaze snapped up. “It’s what you might call the Amish version of direct marketing.”

  Laura thought for a moment. “Old quilts or new?”

  “New for the most part. Sometimes, if a daughter or son is getting married and relocating, both. Each Amish community has its own way of doing things, and it’s traditional for a newlywed bride to learn her in-laws’ ways of quilting.”

  “Marvelous.” Dollar signs practically popped up in the other woman’s eyes. “They probably have no idea of what they’re worth.”

  “Hold on.” Jane held up one hand for emphasis. “Just because they’re plain people doesn’t mean they’re naïve. They don’t give their quilts away. But you’ll get a better price from the maker than you could from a distributor or quilt shop.

  “Country lifestyle and decor are very popular here,” Jane continued, “and our area markets and shops can provide you with all sorts of antiques and furnishings. Come back again. It’s not that long a drive from the city.” Jane tried to think of how else she could help the woman. “I love going to browse through the local markets and I’ve been to some that don’t advertise in our town guide. I’ll write up a list of them for you.”