No one, not even their harshest, most jealous critics, could deny that the Cherokee Rose Quilters were tireless champions of the quilting arts, respected ambassadors for the state of Georgia in the art world, and dedicated benefactors of numerous worthy causes. Their annual quilt retreat at the Château Élan was universally acknowledged to be worth every penny spent, every mile driven, and every seam ripped out and resewn in order to impress their perfectionist teachers.
Pauline had been quilting for about eight years when she and two friends attended a Cherokee Rose Quilters retreat at Château Élan, humorously dubbed “French Finishing School” for that year’s emphasis on borders and bindings. She returned home utterly transformed, a traditional patchwork scrap quilter whose eyes had been opened to the glorious world of landscape quilts, abstract compositions, and embellishment. Even Ray noticed that her work improved dramatically in the months following the retreat, becoming more evocative, complex, rich, and technically precise. Best of all, the entire quiltmaking experience became more freeing, more fulfilling, and more engrossing than she had ever dreamed it could be. Considering how stressful her job was and how busy her life as a wife and mother, this was an unexpected blessing she rejoiced in every time she picked up her rotary cutter or sat down at her sewing machine.
Three years later, when Kori was in second grade and Colton was an eager kindergartener, Pauline met Jeanette, the mother of one of Colton’s classmates, a towheaded boy who shared Colton’s obsession with plastic dump trucks and pea gravel. Almost every day after school, Pauline and Jeanette let their children work off their pent-up energy on the playground before walking home. As the semester passed, the women became friends nearly as quickly as their sons did. They gossiped about the other mothers and commiserated over the usual parenting woes, scheduled playdates for the boys, and occasionally met for coffee on a rare weekday off. Even so, Pauline didn’t discover that Jeanette was a quilter until the spring, when Jeanette mentioned that the president of the PTA had asked her to make a quilt in honor of their beloved principal, who would be retiring at the end of the semester after thirty years in the district.
“I adore her,” said Jeanette, “and I’m happy to make the quilt. I just wish they’d given me more notice. Now I’ll have to throw something together, and I’m sure that I won’t be satisfied with the results.”
“You have two months,” Pauline reassured her. “That’s plenty of time.”
Jeanette shook her head, frowned, and said, almost to herself, “Not for one of my quilts it isn’t.”
Were her quilts especially complex, Pauline wondered, or was Jeanette exceptionally slow? “I’ll help you,” she said impulsively, adding modestly, “I quilt a little myself.”
“Really?”
“Really, I quilt, and really, I’ll help you,” said Pauline, laughing and squeezing Jeanette’s arm reassuringly.
Jeanette hesitated. “I don’t usually . . . collaborate on my pieces. I have more of a . . . solitary vision. I know that sounds arrogant—”
“No, no, not at all,” Pauline hastened to say. So Jeanette was an art quilter, or perhaps she thought of herself as a fiber artist. Either way, Pauline knew the type, and, admittedly, she had become something of an art quilter herself. She knew how to handle an artist’s temperament. “Here’s what we’ll do. You can think of me as your assistant. I’ll cut pieces, go shopping, thread needles—whatever you need. You focus on the big picture and dump the busywork on me. I can take it.”
After a moment’s pause, Jeanette smiled and agreed.
The following Saturday, Jeanette invited Pauline to her home and led her upstairs into a spacious room over the garage Pauline hadn’t known existed. “This is my studio,” Jeanette said with a grin, standing at the threshold and spreading her arms dramatically. “My sanctuary.”
Pauline nodded, muffling a gasp of amazement and envy. The two longest walls were lined with cubbyhole shelves bursting with fabric bolts and flat folds of every color and hue imaginable. Upon the shorter wall to the right of the entrance hung a design wall covered in cream-colored flannel marked with a grid, to which several meticulously pieced blocks were affixed, signs of a different work in progress. A cutting table covered in mats and racks for rulers and rotary cutters stood in one corner opposite an ironing station with both a standard iron and a commercial steam press. Skylights flooded the room with warm, natural light, and on the far wall was a sewing table boasting all manner of drawers and containers for thread, tools, and notions—and a gleaming Bernina that Pauline knew cost nearly twelve thousand dollars.
“I don’t know how you can get anything done in such a cramped space,” Pauline managed to say. “And with so little fabric and such outdated tools.”
Jeanette laughed. “Oh, I know. It’s a luxury, and the commissions I earn barely pay for it. I always feel like I have to justify having a studio, which is why I rarely bring anyone up here except other members of my guild.”
“An artist needs a workspace,” said Pauline staunchly, turning slowly in place in the center of the room and taking it all in. “If you were a painter, and a man, no one would argue that you didn’t need or deserve the tools of your trade and a place of your own in which to use them.” Then her friend’s last few words sank in. “You’re a member of the guild? I’ve never seen you at the meetings.”
“Not the Sunset Ridge Quilt Guild,” said Jeanette. “I belong to a group called the Cherokee Rose Quilters.”
“No kidding?” She should have known. “Wow.”
Jeanette offered her a painful, uncomfortable smile. “Is that a good wow or a ‘Now I hate you’ wow?”
“That’s a good, very impressed wow. I went to one of your retreats a few years ago, and it was a revelation.” Pauline didn’t remember seeing Jeanette there, but perhaps she hadn’t joined the group yet. “Why the heck did you keep this a secret from me? I thought we were friends.”
“Of course we’re friends.” Jeanette noticeably relaxed. “I didn’t know you were a quilter. I didn’t think you’d care about my quaint little hobby.”
Pauline heard the ironic emphasis Jeanette put on the last three words and nodded sympathetically. Her own quilting had been dismissed many a time by the ignorant and the uninformed. “Even if I weren’t a quilter, I’d still care. You should be proud to be a part of something so special.”
“I am.” Then Jeanette shook her head and waved a hand as if her remarkable accomplishments were the most boring subject imaginable. “I’ve made a few sketches for the principal’s quilt. Want to see them?”
Naturally Pauline did, and they were as unique and amazing as she had expected. Jeanette’s design captured the most important events of the school year and the highlights of the principal’s long career in a series of vignettes rendered in appliqués cut in the fashion of folded paper dolls or snowflakes. Pauline thought it was absolutely perfect, and she said so when Jeanette generously asked if she had any suggestions.
Throughout the spring, they met in Jeanette’s studio every weekend to work on the quilt. Jeanette retained complete artistic control, altering the design as the spirit moved her and sewing every stitch, while Pauline took over the responsibilities of transferring Jeanette’s meticulously crafted patterns from paper to fabric and cutting out the appliqués. Sometimes they chatted as they worked; sometimes Jeanette needed complete silence as she wrestled with a particularly intricate motif. But even then, their quiet companionship relaxed and invigorated them both.
Together they completed the quilt on time, and when it was unveiled to thunderous applause at the principal’s retirement party, even Jeanette admitted that she wouldn’t change a stitch—despite her confession to Pauline a few weeks before that she was never completely satisfied with any of her creations, that she never felt that any of them were entirely complete.
“My only regret is that the project’s ov
er,” Jeanette said as they left the party. “I enjoyed working with you.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” said Pauline, suspecting that she would miss their collaboration even more than Jeanette would. “I guess we can always hope that the new principal will retire in a year or two.”
Fortunately, their newfound friendship endured even though another opportunity to sew together didn’t immediately rise. At Jeanette’s prompting, Pauline attended another Cherokee Rose Quilters charity retreat, and she was delighted to be invited to sit at the guild members’ table at mealtimes. A few months later, an even more astonishing surprise arrived in the mail: a letter on thick paper embossed with the Cherokee Rose Quilters logo inviting her to apply for membership in the guild.
Safely alone in her kitchen when the invitation arrived, Pauline squealed and jumped up and down, alternately waving the letter triumphantly overhead and clutching it to her heart. But as the afternoon passed, and she awaited Ray’s return home from work so she could share the good news, the sober realization sank in that her selection for the coveted place was far from certain. It was entirely possible that she had been invited only because she was Jeanette’s friend and not because of her merits as a quilter. She had won a few awards and ribbons, and a few of her quilts had been juried into prominent national quilt shows, but surely every other quilter vying for the vacancy could boast of similar accomplishments. She knew she ought to content herself with the invitation, and she mentally rehearsed telling Jeanette that it had been an honor just to be considered.
But her rehearsals proved unnecessary when, after an interview and a second, follow-up interview, Pauline was invited to join the guild. As she reveled in the unexpected honor and celebrated at the initiation party held at the guild’s Savannah museum, Pauline nonetheless harbored secret doubts that she was truly the most deserving. Did the other quilters really want her, or had Jeanette advocated for her so relentlessly that they had eventually surrendered and agreed to choose Pauline out of sheer exhaustion?
Ray urged her not to second-guess the guild’s decision and to simply enjoy this wonderful reward for her hard work and talent, but it was nearly impossible to do so. In her first few months as a Cherokee Rose Quilter, Pauline found herself studying the other guild members for any sign that she was not truly wanted. Jeanette was obviously thrilled that she had joined the guild, and most of the other members were friendly, warm, and welcoming in various degrees depending upon their personalities, but one quilter stood apart, aloof, no matter how often Pauline tried to engage her in conversation. While all the other members of the guild had introduced themselves to Pauline at the party, Brenda Hughley had not. As the evening wound down and Pauline realized that she had made the acquaintance of all of the Cherokee Rose Quilters save one, she quickly put together two small plates with an assortment of treats from the dessert table and carried them over to the corner where Brenda stood, sipping a glass of sparkling water with lime.
“Hi.” Pauline greeted her brightly, holding out one of the plates. “I noticed that you’re the only one without dessert, so I brought you a little sampler before everything’s gone.”
Tall and lanky, with sandy blond hair cut boyishly short and angular features, Brenda waved the plate away. “Oh, no, thank you. I don’t eat that sort of thing.”
“Not even at a party?” Pauline set the extra plate on a nearby table, wishing she had chosen the fruit salad instead of cookies and brownies. “I guess I should have known, with a figure like yours.”
“I do Pilates.” Brenda glanced past Pauline’s shoulder and nodded to someone behind her. “And I don’t put junk in my body.”
Pauline laughed weakly and set down her own plate, piled embarrassingly high with decadent goodness, next to the one she had prepared for Brenda. “I should follow your example.”
“Oh, go ahead.” Brenda waved a hand toward the plate. “Indulge. Why not, in your case?”
Pauline wasn’t sure what Brenda meant and she didn’t want to ask. “So, have you decided what class you’re going to teach at the retreat?”
“Oh, I never teach unless I’m paid for it.” Brenda sipped her sparkling water. “Besides, teaching would take away too much time from my quilting.”
“The other Cherokee Rose Quilters seem to manage both just fine,” Pauline remarked, immediately regretting it when Brenda’s slight frown told her it was the wrong thing to say. “I guess you’re probably busy with other things. Which committee are you in charge of?”
Brenda shook her head and shifted her weight. “None of them. I’m much too busy.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you were one of the officers.”
“I’m not, but that doesn’t mean I’m not busy.” Without meeting her gaze, Brenda edged away. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Puzzled, Pauline watched her go, feeling slighted and more than a little foolish. She picked up her dessert plate, nibbled a mocha brownie, and wished she had made a better first impression. She would make up for it later, she decided, taking both plates in hand and dumping them discreetly into the wastebasket.
But in the weeks that followed, that proved easier said than done. Brenda never smiled when Pauline greeted her at the start of a monthly meeting, nor did she reply with anything more than a nod when Pauline bade her good-bye afterward. When the group discussed upcoming plans and projects, Brenda usually acknowledged Pauline’s suggestions with a shrug and a muffled sigh before asking if anyone else had any good ideas.
“She doesn’t like me,” Pauline told Ray. “I don’t know why, but she doesn’t.”
Ray’s brow furrowed in puzzlement as if he couldn’t imagine how anyone wouldn’t adore his wife as much as he did. “How does she treat everyone else?”
Pauline mulled it over. “She seems to get along fine with the others. Not that she’s ever the most outgoing or bubbly person, but she at least talks to them.”
“Maybe she’s shy,” Ray suggested. “Maybe once she gets to know you, she’ll talk to you more.”
Considering how forcefully Brenda voiced her opinions at the Cherokee Rose Quilters’ roundtable discussions, Pauline doubted shyness was the problem. “I think I offended her at the initiation party,” she reluctantly admitted. “I was just chatting, you know, asking questions like you do when you’re trying to get to know someone, but maybe she thought I was criticizing her.”
“Criticizing her how?”
“By implying she doesn’t do enough for the guild. She doesn’t teach at the retreats, she’s not in charge of any committees, and she’s not an officer.” Pauline was struck by a sudden thought. “You know, I can’t help wondering why she doesn’t play a more significant role in the guild. Everyone else does. I’ve been a member for only a few months and I’m already leading the publicity committee and serving on two others.”
“Well, sugar, giving doesn’t come naturally to everyone.”
“But the whole point of the guild is to give—our time, our labor, our expertise, our encouragement—to support the art and heritage of quilting throughout the state of Georgia.”
“And you get a lot in return,” said Ray. “Satisfaction in a job well done, good times with your friends, development of your own artistic talents, and not a small amount of fame and glory.”
“Not to mention an annual free vacation at the Château Élan.” Could Brenda have become a Cherokee Rose Quilter not because she wanted to give of her time and talents to support the guild’s mission, but because of the fringe benefits—the admiration of other quilters impressed by her membership in such an exclusive group, the gratitude of the people served by the charities the guild supported, the development of her own artistic talents through guild critiques and workshops?
Pauline didn’t want to believe it. “She can’t be in it just for herself. She does participate, just maybe not as much as everyone else.”
Ray frowned dubiously. “If you say so, sugar. I’ve never met the woman.”
“I’ve known her for months and I can’t figure her out either.” Pauline sighed. “If I did offend her, I wish she’d just tell me so I could make it right.”
But although Pauline tried and tried again to befriend Brenda, she remained as aloof as ever. Brenda did speak to her when they were obliged to work on projects together, but although she chatted about her job and family with veteran guild members, with Pauline she was strictly business.
Bemused, Pauline found reassurance in the friendships she had struck up with the other guild members, some of whom became as close to her as Jeanette. They admired her quilting, and their amazing talents inspired her to reach even greater heights. They seemed to appreciate her dedication to the guild and the energy she brought to their charitable works. Before long she felt perfectly at home in the guild she had once admired from a distance—comfortable with everyone except Brenda.
The Giving Quilt Page 7
