4 Plagued by Quilt

by Molly Macrae

  Heat a lightly oiled cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Cook the bread for 11/2–2 minutes on the first side, until lightly golden. Turn and cook for 1 minute on the other side. Assemble and shape another bread while the first is cooking. Serve breads warm or at room temperature.

  Crazy Mug Rug or Hot Pad

  Designed by Kate Winkler, Designs from Dove Cottage, 2014

  Designed for Molly MacRae’s Plagued by Quilt

  MATERIALS:

  Assorted scraps of felt—bits of felted sweaters work best, but craft felt will also work

  Embroidery floss, perle cotton, or needlepoint wool in colors to coordinate with felt

  Sewing thread in a neutral color

  TOOLS:

  Crewel or embroidery needle with eye large enough for your thickest embroidery fiber

  Scissors

  Pinking shears (optional, but recommended)

  Pins

  INSTRUCTIONS:

  1. Cut a circle from one piece of felt: 41/2–5" for a mug rug, 8–9" for a hot pad. This will be the base.

  2. Arrange random scraps of felt on top of the base to cover it—don’t worry if they extend beyond the edges of the base. Do not overlap edges of scraps; rather, butt the edges together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Trimming edges of scraps with pinking shears will facilitate butting them together smoothly.

  3. It’s helpful to take a digital photo of your final arrangement to refer to during sewing.

  4. With sewing thread, whipstitch scraps together, skimming your needle through the felt—you don’t want the sewing thread to show on the other side of the patchwork.

  5. Using the base as a template, trim patchwork to same size and shape.

  6. Turn patchwork over to unstitched side. With embroidery fiber, embellish joins between scraps with whatever color and stitch strikes your fancy, e.g. feather stitch, fly stitch, herringbone, etc. Chain stitch “vines” with lazy-daisy “leaves” and flowers; French knots are nice, too. You may add flowers or other figures in the centers of some patches.

  7. When patchwork is embellished to your satisfaction, pin it to the base and stitch through both layers 1/4" from the edge—a simple running stitch will do, but you could work around it in blanket stitch if you prefer (again, trimming the edge with pinking shears can help you evenly space your stitches).

  8. If your finished mug rug or hot pad is wavy, press it with an iron set to “steam” and the appropriate heat setting for your felt.

  Read on for a sneak peek at

  the next Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery,

  KNIT THE USUAL SUSPECTS

  Coming in fall 2015 from Obsidian

  Waiting for twilight would have been a good idea. Waiting for full dark, even better. I would’ve been less conspicuous, anyway. A sunny weekday morning was hardly the best time for scuttling up the courthouse steps and sliding behind one of the massive columns—not if I wanted to call myself “sneaky.”

  I hesitated at the bottom of the steps. My friends and former colleagues back in Springfield, Illinois, might not think so, but from where I stood, Blue Plum, Tennessee, bustled. Crowds didn’t jostle me, but in the way of small towns, as long as anyone was around, there was a chance that someone would see something and mention it to two or three others. The problem was my own fault, though. If I’d completed my one measly measuring assignment for TGIF sooner, I wouldn’t have had to worry now about being surreptitious in broad daylight. The occasional criminal investigation aside, TGIF—Thank Goodness It’s Fiber—was not a group ordinarily dedicated to furtive operations, so I didn’t want to let them down as we prepared for our first ever clandestine yarn bombing.

  The way to sneak successfully, I decided, was to act normal. Eyes open, not casting shifty glances left and right. Shoulders square, not hunched as though ready to creep. Air of confidence. Relaxed smile.

  I walked up the dozen worn limestone steps, looking for all the world like anyone else on her way to renew car tags, attend a trial, or probate a will. But at the top, rather than follow an older couple across the portico and through the doors, I stopped, turned around, and pretended to enjoy my elevated view of Main Street.

  I didn’t really have to pretend. The streetscape, a mix of mostly Federal and Victorian architecture, looked and felt exactly right to me. Pink and purple petunias spilled from half-barrel planters along the brick sidewalks. Window boxes with scarlet geraniums and sweet-potato vines brightened storefronts. Looking right, I saw the bank and a half dozen office buildings and shops and, down at the end of the next block, the sign for the public library. To the left, along past Mel’s café, my own shop, the Weaver’s Cat, basked in the morning sun. This view, this town, had been part of my life through all my childhood summers when I’d come to visit my grandmother in her hometown. Now, thanks to her generosity in leaving me her house and the Weaver’s Cat, Blue Plum was my hometown, too.

  I watched Rachel Meeks, the banker, deadhead a couple of geraniums in the planters at the bank’s door. Somewhere in her mid-to-late fifties, Rachel’s business suit mirrored her straightforward business sense. Apparently, so did her sense of gardening decorum. She carried the withered flowers inside with her. I strolled to the end of the portico, still looking out over the street and assuming I still looked casual; then I sidled around behind the last column, where I’d be in its shadow and couldn’t be seen from the steps or the door. There I took a coil of string from a pocket in my shoulder bag.

  A second pair of hands to hold one end of the string would have helped. Unfortunately, my favorite second pair of hands had other business that morning. Joe—the Renaissance odd-job man-about-town who’d worked his way into my heart—had gone over the mountains early to deliver a half dozen fly rods he’d built for an outfitter in Asheville. That was just as well; two of us fiddling around a column would have drawn more attention. I took a roll of painter’s tape from my bag, tore off an inch-long piece, and pressed it over the end of the string, sticking it to the column at about waist height.

  The plan was to circle the column with the string and mark the string where it met itself again, then remove the tape, recoil the string, return string and tape to my bag, and retreat to the Weaver’s Cat. I’d barely started around the column, though, when a familiar voice made me pull back out of sight.

  “Ms. Weems, ma’am—oof—now, that was uncalled for.”

  “You’re a quack, and I’ll tell anyone who asks.”

  “Let’s step on inside, then, ma’am, and you can tell the sheriff.”

  I inched around the column in time to see Joe’s uniformed and starched brother, Deputy Cole Dunbar, ushering a tiny elderly woman through the courthouse doors. The woman, Mayor Palmer “Pokey” Weems’ mother, wore tennis shoes, and it was a good thing. As she passed Joe’s brother, she hauled off and kicked his shin. He winced, but there was no second “oof.” That led me to believe the first “oof’ had been a reaction to a different kind of assault—maybe a swift connection between Ms. Weems’ pocketbook and his midsection.

  Snickering at someone else’s pain isn’t nice, even if that person is a clod. And even though Cole Dunbar would always be “Clod” to me, I was fairly sure I hadn’t snickered. But, just before the door closed on him, something made Clod turn toward me and my column. I immediately knelt and retied my shoe, pretending not to notice him noticing me.

  “I’m not sure he fell for that,” a voice from a little farther around the column said.

  At one time in my life an unknown and unexpected voice addressing me out of the blue might have startled me. Not anymore. Now I practically yawned to show how blasé I was about such surprises. I also flicked an inconsequential speck of dust from the toe of my shoe to show I wasn’t worried about whether Clod fell for my retying pretense. Then I stood up to see who seemed to think I might be worried. That I could see a living, breathing human standing there was a p
lus, even if I hadn’t ever seen him before and had no idea who he was. Judging by the light gray overtaking the dark gray in his beard, I guessed he was in his fifties—older than Clod by at least ten years and Joe by more than a dozen.

  “That was one of the Dunbar brothers, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Weren’t they named after composers?” The camera around the stranger’s neck made him look like a tourist. The soft twang in his question sounded local.

  “Poets. That was Coleridge,” I said.

  “And the other one’s name . . .” He tried to tease it from his memory by tipping his head and waving his hand by his ear.

  “Tennyson.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Coleridge Blake Dunbar and Tennyson Yeats Dunbar,” I said, “except the deputy there goes by Cole and his brother is Joe.”

  “Smart move.” The stranger nodded. “Better than Cold Fridge and Tennis Shoe, both of which I remember hearing when the boys would have been at a tender age. Huh. I haven’t thought about them in years. But even back then I wondered how they’d turn out, weighed down with those names.” His tone was mild rather than judgmental. It had a reminiscent, storytelling sound to it.

  “You’re from Blue Plum?”

  “Not for a few years, anyway,” he said.

  Not for a few decades, if he hadn’t known Clod was a sheriff’s deputy and that Joe was, well, Joe.

  “Can I give you a hand with your string there?” he asked.

  “Oh.” I’d let go of the string when I’d pretended to tie my shoe. The end was still stuck to the column with the painter’s tape.

  “Measuring it for a school project, right? You hold it there and I’ll just—” He picked up the dangling end and walked around the column to meet me. “One of my proudest moments in the fourth grade was when I made my cardboard model of the courthouse. Of course, a flexible metal tape measure would be the best way to do this, but your string works, too.”

  I took a felt tip pen out of my shoulder bag and marked the string. He pulled the tape off the column, coiled the string, and handed it to me. I tucked it and the pen back into my bag.

  “Thanks. It was nice of you to help,” I said, turning to go.

  And I saw Clod. He’d come back out of the courthouse and stood beside the door in his police-issue posture, arms crossed, watching me and whoever the guy was who’d just helped me with my string-and-column project.

  “Hey, Cole,” I called, with a wave as wide and insincere as my smile. “Here’s an old friend of yours.” I pointed over my shoulder, then turned back to my new friend to reintroduce him to his old acquaintance. But no one was there.