The Giving Quilt (13 page)

“Karen,” Linnea called out, beckoning. “Come join us.”

Karen smiled, relieved as she made her way to them. “Thanks,” she said, and Linnea shrugged as if it were no big deal, but of course it was, because even among friendly quilters it was demoralizing to be the one left over, the one not chosen, the one not noticed but assigned by default to the group with the fewest members.

Karen proved to be a most welcome addition to their team. First Sarah led them in a game of Quilters' Trivial Pursuit that had them laughing so hard they had to wipe tears from their eyes. A game of Quilters' Pictionary followed, and after that came a raucous match of Quilters' Charades. The team of Linnea, Mona, Pauline, and Karen were declared the Games Night champions for winning two out of the three rounds, having sealed their victory in the closing seconds of charades with Karen's impossibly intuitive understanding of Linnea's frantic attempts to act out the phrase “lengthwise grain.”

The other quilters cheerfully bemoaned their losses while applauding the winners, who were awarded Elm Creek Quilts pins as the grand prize. Pictured upon each pin was an elm tree, brilliant with the colors of autumn, growing tall and strong on the bank of a flowing creek with green hills rising in the background. Mona and Pauline kept their pins safe in their cellophane bags, but Linnea and Karen eagerly tore the plastic open and fastened their pins to their blouses for everyone to admire.

Linnea wore hers out of pride for their hard-fought and hard-won triumph in the games, but something in Karen's shy smile, flushed cheeks, and furtive glances to Sarah told her that Karen wore hers because it made her feel more like an official Elm Creek Quilter.

* * *

The next morning, Linnea and Mona woke shortly after sunrise, bundled up in their warmest workout clothes, and went down the hall to rap softly upon Pauline's door. It swung open immediately. “Ready to go?” Pauline whispered brightly. Linnea nodded, biting her lips together to keep from laughing at her new friend's eager excitement. It was just a walk, after all, and likely to be a cold one at that.

The morning was indeed chillier and more blustery than the previous day had been, and they saw fewer other campers out and about on the estate's frosty grounds. “We're diehards,” Linnea puffed as they strode briskly through the north gardens, the better to reach the warmth of Elm Creek Manor sooner. “Hard-core.”

“Hardheaded, maybe,” Pauline replied, panting, prompting laughter from the sisters.

A lengthy stretch in the warmth of the back foyer, showers, and breakfast followed their workout, and before long they found themselves back in the partitioned classroom awaiting their second lesson in the making of a Giving Quilt. The room seemed warmer somehow, the students more cheerful and chattier, a result, Linnea suspected, of having broken the ice with the fun and friendly competition of Games Night. At the front of the room, Gretchen had to raise her hands as well as her voice to command their attention when she was ready to begin. “Good morning, everyone,” she greeted them, smiling. “I'm glad to find you so energetic and eager to go, because we have a lot to accomplish today. Now that you have all of your pieces cut, it's time to begin assembling your blocks.”

She held up a single Resolution Square block, tilted it on point, and held it against the display quilt so her students could better discern where one block blended into another. “Please study the block carefully and then pass it on to your neighbor,” Gretchen said, handing the block to Pauline, who sat at one end of the front row. As the block made its slow progression around the classroom, Gretchen seated herself behind her sewing machine, glanced at the mirror overhead to be sure it was tilted at the proper angle, and sewed a small white rectangle to one of the purple-and-white square pairs she had made in her demonstration the previous day. “Match the corners carefully with right sides facing each other, align the edges, and pin if you prefer,” she continued, selecting another rectangle and square pair and joining them in the same manner. “Color placement of the squares is very important, so be sure to sew the rectangle to the correct edge of the square pair. Finish one set, double-check to be sure it's correct, and then keep it on the table nearby as an example to follow.”

Linnea joined her classmates in following Gretchen's instructions. Their voices rose above the whirring of their sewing machines as they worked and conversed. Those who finished first—Pauline and Karen—carried their sewn pieces to the ironing stations and pressed the seams, and other classmates soon followed suit. When Pauline finished, she bounded back to her place and began quickly repeating the process with the green-and-white pieces for her second Giving Quilt, while Karen left her pressed block segments at her place in the back row and hurried over to help a struggling classmate.

Pauline seemed not quite finished with the pieces for her second top by the time the rest of the class completed the step and Gretchen announced that it was time to move on. “Count your block segments,” she advised. “You should have sixty-four. If not, please check on the floor around you or the pressing tables for those wayward pieces.” Sure enough, someone gasped and exclaimed that she had only sixty-three, but another quilter quickly found the missing pieces mixed in with her own.

“Next we'll sew a large medium square to each segment you just completed.” Gretchen sat down at her sewing machine and sewed a medium square, which in her case was a red floral and in Linnea's was a bold blue solid, to the square-pair-and-rectangle piece. “Color placement is crucial in this step too, so be sure to use the display quilt or the sample block as a model.”

The students did as they were told, making what could have been dull work a more pleasant task by chatting and joking with their neighbors and by taking time to admire their classmates' work. With a little help from Linnea, Mona proceeded slowly and cautiously along like the tortoise of the fable, assembling her blocks properly at her own steady pace. By all appearances, Pauline was her counterpart, the hare, although Linnea suspected Pauline would turn the tale on its head and finish her quilt top first and flawlessly rather than pausing for a nap along the way.

Linnea had finished sewing her block segments and was helping Mona when Gretchen glanced at the clock and announced that due to the time, she would demonstrate the next step even though not everyone had reached that point. Holding up one newly sewn, neatly pressed unit, she said, “This is one half of a Resolution Square block. To complete the block, all you need to do is sew two of them together. Abut facing seams where you can, and pin all along the edge to keep the halves from shifting.” With that, she pieced two halves together on the front table so they could follow along in the overhead mirror, seated herself at her sewing machine, and stitched a quick, perfect seam, removing the pins as they approached the darting needle rather than sewing heedlessly over them. Linnea would do well to follow her example. She had broken many a needle and had sent shards of pins flying dangerously close to her face by neglecting that one important safety measure.

The students worked busily, but not even Pauline or Karen finished all thirty-two of their blocks before the end of class. Gretchen reminded them that they were welcome to use the classroom sewing machines and pressing tables or any of those set up outside the partitioned walls if they wanted to finish up their blocks during their afternoon free time. “I encourage you to do so,” she added, “since tomorrow we'll be sewing the blocks into rows and assembling the tops.”

“My book can wait,” said Mona as she and Linnea packed up their things, placing their carefully pinned but not yet completed blocks at the top of their tote bags. “I want to stay on track. I'd hate to reach the end of the week without finishing a single quilt to donate to Project Linus.”

“What do you suppose they do if a camper doesn't finish a single quilt?” mused Michaela, who apparently had been listening in from her seat in the row behind them. “Do they keep a running tab of our expenses, and then, if we don't have a quilt to show off at the Farewell Breakfast and donate to Project Linus, they hand us a bill?”

Linnea laughed, but Karen, who was passing by on her way to the front of the classroom to speak with Gretchen, came to a halt and said, “I really doubt it.”

“But do you know for sure?” Michaela persisted.

Karen winced slightly. “No, but that doesn't sound like something the Elm Creek Quilters would do.”

“I'm sure we're on the honor system,” said Jocelyn, tugging the straps of her tote bag over her shoulder. “If we don't finish by Saturday, they'll probably ask us to finish our Giving Quilts at home and donate them to our local chapter of Project Linus.”

Karen nodded, but Pauline looked pensive. “If we stay on schedule, we shouldn't have anything to worry about,” she said. “But just in case, if any of you can't finish your Giving Quilts in time, I'll let you borrow one of mine for the show-and-tell.”

“That's like so nice of you,” said Michaela, and the others chimed in with their thanks—except for Karen, who merely nodded to show that she agreed that Pauline was very nice. She seemed the least likely of them to need to take Pauline up on her offer.

The quintet of quilters went to lunch together, Linnea carrying Michaela's quilting gear and Karen her lunch tray. The younger woman moved along exceptionally well on her crutches, but Linnea couldn't imagine how Michaela managed the stairs. Halfway through lunch—a hearty vegetarian four-bean chili or a Tex-Mex beef-and-pork version that reminded her wistfully of Kevin at the grill—Linnea's curiosity compelled her to ask.

“Someone carries my stuff for me, and I just scoot up on my bottom, one step at a time,” said Michaela cheerfully, breaking off a piece of corn bread and dipping it into her vegetarian chili.

“That sounds time-consuming,” remarked Jocelyn. “Not to mention labor-intensive.”

“It is, but I don't need to go back to my room much. Just at the end of the day.”

“But how do you get
down
the stairs?” Linnea asked, persisting.

“The same way she got up them, I suppose,” said Karen, “but more carefully.”

Everyone laughed, and the conversation turned to how Michaela managed to do any number of other things that her cast would make more difficult. It wasn't until later, after they had finished their lunches and made plans to meet in the ballroom in an hour to work on their Giving Quilt blocks, that Linnea realized Michaela hadn't really answered the question.

When Linnea, Mona, Pauline, Jocelyn, and Michaela reconvened an hour later, they decided to forgo the classroom for the sewing stations arranged on the long tables near the west windows, the better to enjoy the view. The windows looked out upon a decidedly more wintry scene than earlier that day; the blustery winds had subsided, but a snow shower had taken their place, and as best as Linnea could estimate, a little more than an inch had accumulated on the grass, the parking lot, and the campers' cars.

“If this keeps up,” she remarked to her sister, “our morning walk will be a little more challenging tomorrow.”

“I hope you brought your snowshoes,” Mona replied.

Linnea shook her head. “They wouldn't fit in my carry-on.”

“Check the closet in the back foyer,” Karen advised, glancing up from her work. She had only a handful of unfinished Resolution Square blocks remaining, which made Linnea suspect she had taken a speed-sewing course at some point in her quilting career. “The Elm Creek Quilters always keep a few pairs in the back. I'm sure they'd let you borrow them.”

Linnea and Mona exchanged amused glances. Apparently their humor was too deadpan, because no one else ever seemed to get it. “Thanks, but let's hope we won't need them,” Linnea told Karen, and settled down to work.

She was about two-thirds of the way through her stack of pinned blocks when the urge to get up, stretch, and explore began tugging her attention away from her work. “Can you watch my stuff?” she asked her sister. “I thought I'd take a walk.”

“What if someone else needs the sewing machine?”

Linnea jerked her thumb toward the two vacant workstations at the far end of the table. “They can use those.”

Mona folded her arms and regarded her sternly. “What if other quilters claim those places while you're gone, and this is the only free sewing machine left?”

“Including those in the classroom?” Linnea sighed good-naturedly. “In that unlikely event, please move my blocks out of the way and tell this hypothetical quilter that she's welcome to work here.”

That satisfied Mona, so Linnea rose and started to leave. Pauline looked up from her work. “You're finished already?”

“No, just taking a break. I never did like to sit still in one place for long.”

“Tell me about it,” said Michaela, frowning at her cast. “Before this stupid injury, I was a total exercise nut. Now I'm—”

“Just a nut?” Jocelyn offered.

Michaela grinned. “Exactly.”

“Linnea heard an enticing rumor of a library somewhere in the manor,” Mona explained to their new friends with a teasing glance at her sister. “She's determined to find it. No library shall escape her sight.”

“I looked around yesterday, but I got led astray by the McClure twins,” Linnea said. “It's not on the maps, either. I double-checked last night.”

“Maybe we're not supposed to use the library,” said Pauline. “That would explain why it's not on the map.”

“Maybe they closed it down,” said Michaela.

Linnea felt her heart lurch. “I sincerely hope not.”

Immediately Mona reached for her hand and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. “Few things pain a librarian more than the thought of a library closing,” she explained to the others.