James and Caroline nodded so vigorously that Linnea almost feared they would injure themselves. She asked them to take her to their favorite reading spot and was not at all surprised when they led her to the most comfortably appointed window seat. She settled herself in the middle of the nest of quilts and pillows, and with one twin snuggled up to her on either side, she began reading the story of the children’s magic-infused summer vacation on a northern Indiana lake. She had just reached the part where Mark encounters the talking turtle when someone appeared in the playroom doorway.
“There you two are,” exclaimed Sarah, striding into the room. The twins, who had become so engrossed in the story that they had nearly climbed onto Linnea’s lap in their eagerness for the next sentence, scrambled down from the window seat. “Why didn’t you come when I called you?”
“We didn’t hear you,” said Caroline.
“We were listening to a story,” explained James, indicating Linnea.
Sarah sighed. “I hope they weren’t troubling you. They love books, and they love being read to.”
“Believe me,” declared Linnea, “nothing troubles me less than children who love books, and nothing troubles me more than people of any age who don’t.”
“This is a great story, Mama,” said James. “You should read it.”
Sarah glanced at the cover. “I have read that book, honey. It’s one of my favorites.” For Linnea’s benefit, she indicated the bookshelves flanking the fireplace. “Many of these books are mine, books I loved and read over and over again as a child. My mother saved them for me.” Sarah smiled as if touched anew by her mother’s generous foresight. “The others were books beloved by the children of the Bergstrom family, going back generations. Sylvia decided that her childhood favorites belonged up here with mine rather than out of sight among the rest of her books. Now the twins can hold them and look at them and enjoy them whenever they wish.”
“Sylvia is a sensible and wise woman.” Linnea rose and handed the book to James. “As if we needed any additional proof.”
“We’re done reading?” James cried.
“I’ll read you a little more tonight, and we’ll finish the book together, bit by bit,” Sarah quickly promised. “But Miss Linnea is here for quilt camp, and we ought to let her get back to it.”
“Thank you for a charming diversion, children,” said Linnea, shaking their hands. “I’m thoroughly delighted to have met such promising young readers.”
The children beamed, and James piped up, “I’m really glad I ran into you.”
“I’m glad you did too.” Linnea winked to assure him the collision would remain their little secret.
It wasn’t until Linnea was back in the ballroom bent over the sewing machine again that she recalled Sarah’s words and Sylvia’s decision to put her books for younger readers with Sarah’s rather than keeping them with the rest of her books.
So there was another library somewhere in Elm Creek Manor. Linnea had been diverted from her search, but she would try again, and she would find it.
She could ask one of the Elm Creek Quilters instead of searching on her own, but that would take all the fun out of her quest. She knew James and Caroline would understand.
* * *
Linnea had enough time before supper to sew the borders to her Girl’s Joy quilt top but not enough time to press it, so she decided to save that task for another day. She packed up her supplies and scraps, left them in her suite, and met Mona and Pauline in the foyer. Supper was as tasty as every other meal had been—mini chicken potpies served in ramekins or tofu and vegetable stir-fry. When Linnea remarked aloud that the Elm Creek Quilters seemed to offer a vegetarian option with every meal, another quilter seated at their table said, “I bet that’s Summer Sullivan’s influence. She doesn’t teach here anymore, but as a vegetarian herself, she probably taught her friends to make different options available.”
“You don’t have to be a vegetarian to love this,” said Mona, who had chosen the stir-fry.
“Karen,” asked Pauline, studying the other quilter intently, “how do you know so much about the faculty here?”
“I attended a week of summer quilt camp a few years ago, and I took Summer’s Quick Piecing Shortcuts class,” replied the other quilter, whom Linnea remembered as the woman from the Giving Quilt class who had encouraged Pauline not to abandon the search for inspiration. After a moment’s hesitation, Karen added, “I also might have applied for a job here a few years ago, and Summer might have been one of my interviewers.”
“Might have?” echoed Linnea. “You don’t remember?”
Karen laughed self-consciously and poked at her stir-fry with her chopsticks. “Of course I remember. It’s just not the most pleasant of memories, since my interview was a disaster and obviously I didn’t get the job. I don’t blame the Elm Creek Quilters. The other candidates were far more qualified.” With two discreet nods, she indicated Gretchen and another Elm Creek Quilter named Maggie, who were enjoying their chicken potpies and lively conversation at two nearby tables.
Everyone murmured sympathetically, and Michaela, who along with Jocelyn completed the group at their table, said, “Tough competition.”
“The toughest,” Karen agreed, nodding.
“Something else will come along,” said Mona, with a quick glance for Linnea, who knew all too well that sometimes “something else” took its own sweet time in coming.
“Oh, it’s okay. I mean, Sylvia was as nice as she possibly could have been in such circumstances, and something else did come along.” Karen set down her chopsticks and drew her hands into her lap, out of sight beneath the table. “A few months later I found a job at a quilt shop, and I’ve been working there ever since.”
“That sounds like a dream job for a quilter,” said Jocelyn.
“Do you have like an awesome employee discount or what?” asked Michaela.
“Yes, it’s quite nice, actually,” said Karen, smiling. “Definitely the best perk they offer.”
“Are they hiring?” asked Mona.
Karen looked pained. “No, I’m sorry, we’re not, but if you send me your résumé—”
“She was just teasing you,” Linnea broke in, shooting her sister a look of amused exasperation. “It’s a long commute from Minnesota and she’s heard me complain about the hassles of moving too many times through the years to even contemplate moving out of state.”
“Ask me in February.” Mona shivered as if imagining a blizzard swirling about her. “I might give you a different answer.”
Everyone laughed.
After supper, the campers had an hour of free time to relax or, for the more ambitious, to sew a few more stitches before gathering once more in the ballroom for the evening program. The Candlelight Giving Quilt display on the dais had been dismantled, and in its place were six tables with four chairs pulled up to each. Sarah welcomed the campers and instructed them to break up into six teams of four. Immediately Linnea felt Mona seize her arm, and Pauline took a quick step toward them as if afraid they might be separated. Over the heads of the other campers, Linnea saw Michaela and Jocelyn pair up with a middle-aged woman and her elderly mother. Karen stood in the center of it all, glancing from one rapidly forming team to another uncertainly.
“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’ P
ictionary 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 fini
sh 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.
The Giving Quilt Page 11
