The Christmas Boutique

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Diane felt a thrill of delight. “You remember that?”

  Michael shrugged. “Well, yeah. You never let us have candy except for Halloween, Easter, and Christmas. It was kind of a big deal.”

  To her astonishment, when she explained how dilapidated the old calendar had become, her sons offered to repair it. “We should start using it again,” said Michael. “I can fix the pockets, and instead of candies and quarters, you can put tens and twenties in them.”

  “Inflation,” Todd explained. “You know how it is.”

  “Yes, I think I’m catching on,” said Diane, smiling.

  She retrieved the old calendar from its cardboard folder, and while her sons repaired it, she gathered up the appliqué pieces and quickly put them out of sight in her sewing room. If she sewed a few hours a day, she was certain she could complete the new Advent calendars in time to give them to the boys on Christmas morning. And in the days that followed, she had kept to her plan—but then someone had ruined the floor of the community hall, the Christmas Boutique had moved to Elm Creek Manor, and she had not had time for anything but publicity and other preparations for the fund-raiser. Next Christmas, she told herself ruefully whenever she passed her sewing room and thought of the appliqué pieces abandoned on the desk between her thread bin and basket of sewing tools. She would finish them next year for sure.

  Never before had she begun, abandoned, resumed, and reluctantly set aside a project in such rapid succession. Unfortunately, good intentions and great excuses did not bring a quilt one day closer to completion.

  Sighing, she took the stack of finished tops from the shelf, set them on the daybed, and began sorting through them, first a crib quilt in bright primary colors originally intended for a baby, who had recently started the fourth grade, then an English-paper-pieced Grandmother’s Flower Garden in pastel florals that she had put away when removing the papers became too tedious a chore to endure.

  Then she came upon an unquilted top that made her cry out softly in fond recognition. It was exactly what Agnes was looking for, and if only it were finished, it would have complemented Gwen’s Winter Solstice Star beautifully—as one might expect, since Gwen’s superb quilt had inspired it.

  That was in September of Michael’s senior year. To Diane it seemed as if her eldest son had always struggled academically, not because he wasn’t bright, but because he was bored—which, when he was younger, had led to numerous discipline issues that had driven her to distraction. For someone who intensely disliked high school, however, he seemed strangely indifferent to what might follow. While his classmates were applying to colleges or considering different trade schools or enlisting in the military, Michael refused to discuss any options, not with his school counselor and not with his parents.

  “What about computers?” Diane had asked the previous spring, after a lunch with friends had enlightened her to the apparently obligatory gauntlet of standardized tests and campus visits that her son had not even begun. Two years before, his obsession with video games had led him to enroll in a computer programming class, where he had discovered a passion and an extraordinary gift for computer sciences. He had even joined the computer team, his first and only school club. “You could study programming or computer engineering. You’d be so good at that.”

  He shrugged. “If you do something for work, it isn’t fun anymore.”

  “That’s not true,” Diane protested. “Your father loved chemistry when he was your age and he’s very glad he made it his career. I love quilting, and I’ve enjoyed it even more ever since we launched Elm Creek Quilt Camp. Being on the computer team hasn’t taken the fun out of computing, has it?”

  Michael frowned thoughtfully. “I guess that’s true.”

  He said nothing more about it, resisting her careful attempts to pry information out of him all summer. Then, just a few days into his senior year, he came home from a computer team meeting and announced that he had decided he should probably go to college and major in computer programming or engineering or something. Diane and Tim refrained from jumping up and down and cheering, joyful tears streaming down their faces. Instead they calmly replied that it sounded like a good plan and they would help him however they could.

  After signing him up for the SAT and doing a bit of research, they soon discovered that Michael lacked the grades and breadth of extracurricular activities expected of applicants to the top programs in the country. It was too late to join a bunch of sports and run for student council, so he would have to find another way to make a good impression. A few teachers promised to write strong letters of recommendation, and Michael toiled over his personal statement, explaining with a frankness that alarmed Diane that he had made some bad choices when he was younger but he had figured it out and would not repeat the mistakes of his past. He admitted that school had never been his thing until he discovered computers, but ever since, the hard work he had put into mastering difficult concepts in his computer classes had taught him how to do better in other subjects like history and English. He concluded with a few paragraphs describing his theories about how he believed computer technology would evolve in the future and what aspects especially fascinated him. It made absolutely no sense to Diane, but, guardedly hopeful that he knew what he was talking about, she resisted the impulse to suggest he delete them.

  She did encourage him to ask Gwen, a college professor, for her professional opinion of his essay. “Dad’s a professor too and he said it’s great,” said Michael.

  “A second opinion is always helpful, and Dr. Sullivan will be more objective,” she replied. “She may have some useful insights.”

  At that, Michael agreed. He printed out a clean copy of his personal statement and delivered it to Gwen at home, but he was in Harrisburg competing in a tournament with the computer team when she finished reviewing it, so Diane stopped by to pick it up. “It’s a strong, well-crafted essay,” Gwen told her after inviting her inside to wait while she hurried upstairs to her study for the corrected draft. “I noted a few typos, but otherwise I wouldn’t change a word.”

  Relieved, Diane nonetheless asked, “You don’t think he’s too forthcoming about his checkered past? Shouldn’t he accentuate the positive?”

  Gwen shook her head. “His candor is refreshing. With some admissions officers, that will compensate quite a bit for the low GPA.”

  Diane thanked her and added that Michael would be in touch to thank her himself soon. As they passed the living room on their way back to the front door, Diane noticed a quilt draped over the sofa. “What do you have here?” she asked, drawing closer. It reminded her of a Lone Star quilt in that it was based upon an eight-pointed star design and that a single “block” comprised of smaller geometric shapes formed the entire surface of the quilt. But whereas a Lone Star was a single star with eight points made up of many smaller rhombuses, the points of Gwen’s star had been constructed Log Cabin style, with a rhombus at the center and rows of strips sewn in a concentric pattern around it. Another distinctive feature was that the single eight-pointed star in the center was framed by four three-quarter stars in the corners. The colors and the shading of the rhombuses gave Diane the impression of gazing up into a starry winter sky.

  “It’s gorgeous,” she said, but couldn’t resist teasing, “It looks like you tried to make a Log Cabin quilt but you couldn’t quite square it up.”

  “That’s exactly what happened,” said Gwen dryly. “Let’s keep it our little secret.”

  “The star points are based on the Log Cabin, obviously, but how did you come up with this arrangement?”

  “It’s a Snow Crystals block, not my own ingenious invention. Don’t you see it?”

  When Diane admitted that she was not familiar with that particular block, Gwen led her upstairs to her quilt studio, pulled a mid-century index of traditional blocks from a bookshelf, and showed her an illustration. Diane liked the block even more in its original incarnation, standard-size with solid rhombuses. Borrowing paper and colore
d pencils, she carefully sketched it, already imagining how beautifully it would sparkle when multiplied across the surface of a quilt.

  Later, taking a cue from Gwen as she browsed the shelves of Grandma’s Attic, she selected rich blue, warm gold, and shimmery silver-white fabrics evocative of a frosty midwinter night. She made templates, cut pieces, and stitched them together with small, even stitches, imagining how cozy it would be to snuggle up with Tim beneath the finished quilt on New Year’s Eve. With every block she completed, her anticipation for the finished quilt grew.

  Unfortunately, she had picked the busiest time of the year to begin such a substantial project, and other obligations persistently demanded her attention. She and Tim hosted their extended families for Thanksgiving, and Diane lost a week of sewing time to cleaning, cooking, decorating, feasting, and recuperating after the whirlwind. Then came the last-minute rush of helping Michael finish his college applications before the December 1 deadline. Soon thereafter she had to bake scores of cupcakes for the reception following Todd’s winter band concert, and the very next day the family piled into the car and drove out to Schoepke’s Christmas Tree Farm to cut down a gorgeous blue spruce, which they set up in the living room and decorated over the weekend. After that, it was a busy, wonderful, hectic season of baking cookies, decking the halls, attending holiday parties with friends, writing annual letters to include with their Christmas cards, shopping for gifts, enjoying holiday concerts at the college, and making religious observances, with very little time left over for quilting.

  After the holiday merriment subsided, Diane frequently sat by the fireside with a hot drink and a few blocks to stitch, enjoying the stolen moments she had all to herself. But the snow she had found so picturesque and romantic on Christmas Eve seemed tedious and oppressive by the end of January, and by mid-February she never wanted to see another flake. The wintry hues of her Snow Crystals blocks steadily lost their appeal. She longed for spring florals, warm pastels, and patterns like Carolina Lily and Posies Round the Square. The Snow Crystals blocks often sat in her sewing room untouched for days at a time, but in rare, intermittent bursts of determination, she finished the last few blocks, sewed them into rows, sewed the rows together, and attached borders of midnight blue. All that remained was to press the finished top, lightly mark her hand-quilting lines, layer, baste, quilt, and bind. But that was a considerable amount of work, and after Diane finished ironing the seams smooth and flat, she never quite found the time for the next step.

  March brought gusty, warmer winds and melting snows, meetings at the manor to plan for a new season of Elm Creek Quilt Camp, and college acceptances and rejections for Michael. When he decided to attend Waterford College as a computer sciences major, Diane and Tim were delighted and proud. Tim’s status as full professor meant a nice tuition break; Diane had a very dear friend in the department, fellow founding Elm Creek Quilter Judy Nguyen DiNardo, who would look out for him; and although Michael firmly insisted that he intended to move into a campus dorm rather than live at home, he would be close enough that they would surely see him more frequently than if he had chosen a college hundreds of miles away. Things could not have worked out better for Michael, and Diane was thankful.

  By then it was June, warm and sunny, with flowers blooming in the yard and Elm Creek Quilt Camp in full swing. Diane had no time for making winter holiday quilts, nor any inclination either. And when months passed and winter came once more, new blocks and fabrics and styles captured her imagination. She folded the Snow Crystals top and tucked it away on a shelf, and eventually all but forgot it.

  If she acquiesced to necessity and quilted the top with her sewing machine, she could possibly finish it in time to hang it in the ballroom before the doors to the Christmas Boutique opened in the morning. Her machine quilting skills were a bit rusty since she almost never used them, but desperate times called for lowered artistic standards. Unless—

  She carefully folded the Snow Crystals top, set it aside, and resumed sorting through the pile. If she found another top, equally suitable for the holiday decorating theme but smaller, she would be able to quilt it more quickly, increasing the likelihood of meeting her deadline.

  Halfway through the stack, she came across a red-and-white quilt top she had pieced during a brief phase when red-and-white quilts were all the rage. When had she made it, and why? Probably just to follow the popular fad, although she had broken from the trend a bit by reversing the lights and darks, so that her blocks were white focus fabrics on a red background rather than the other way around. As to when she had begun . . .

  She closed her eyes and ran her hand over a block, one of twenty-five arranged on point with red sashing between. A vague memory stirred, a faint certainty that she had assembled the top during the one year when both of her sons were in middle school.

  On a day between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, when the boys were home for winter break and were driving her absolutely crazy with their roughhousing and arguing and incessant beeping and chirping of video games, Tim had suggested that she get out of the house for a while to preserve her remaining sanity. She called Agnes, whose children and grandchildren had already returned to their own homes after Christmas, and gratefully accepted her invitation to come over for tea, quilting, and quiet conversation. As Diane sewed borders to her red-and-white quilt, she told Agnes about her plan to take advantage of post-holiday sales, for she needed a pretty new dress to wear when she accompanied Michael to the Eighth Grade Parent-Student Dance in late January.

  The event had caught her a bit by surprise. Although Diane had been born and raised in Waterford, she had attended the district’s second, more recently constructed middle school, and after she graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, it was there she had taught sixth grade until Michael was born. Abigail Nelson Middle School also held a dance in late January, but it was called the Winter Round-Up and featured a delicious barbecue supper and square dancing to a live band for all grades, and all parents.

  “Michael let me teach him a few basic dances, the waltz and swing, but he acts like it’s sheer torture,” said Diane, pinning a narrow red strip to the edge of the joined rows of blocks. “He doesn’t want to go, but his friends will be there with their mothers, and apparently they’ve made a pact that if one of them has to suffer, they all will.”

  “Suffer?” Agnes echoed as she peered through her pink-tinted glasses at a small leaf appliqué that she was sewing to an Oak Leaf and Reel block. “Some might say they’re lucky they get to attend at all. When my girls attended Lydia Darragh Middle School, the event was known as the Eighth Grade Father-Daughter Dance.”

  “You mean the eighth grade boys didn’t go—and their mothers couldn’t either?”

  “That’s right. A few years ago, though, a single mother complained to the principal when she was forbidden to escort her daughter. The girl’s grandfather took her instead, but the following summer, the mother launched a petition drive to change the rules. The next year, after her own daughter had moved on to high school, all eighth grade students and any parent or important adult in their lives were welcome to attend the dance.”

  “I’m glad the administration saw reason,” Diane declared. “I’d hate to sit home while half of my son’s classmates and their dads were dancing the night away.” Shaking her head, she reached for another pin. “My compliments to that persistent mom, whoever she is.”

  They sewed into the afternoon, pausing for a lunch of tasty leftovers from the Emberly family’s Christmas Day feast. At twilight, Diane returned home calm and refreshed, with a completed quilt top to her credit. Why had she put it away unfinished, when it would have made such a lovely Valentine’s Day gift for Tim or her mother? She honestly could not recall. A red-and-white quilt might not fit a strict interpretation of holiday decor, but Santa’s suit was red and white, as were candy canes. It might be just Christmasy enough to be acceptable, especially if the alternative was a blank wall. How unfortunate it was that the block
name—Dolley Madison’s Star—did absolutely nothing to evoke the holiday spirit.

  Diane decided that this one minor deficiency wasn’t enough to disqualify it, so she folded it carefully, lay it on the Snow Crystals top, and returned to the stack, hoping something ideal awaited discovery. She found tops pieced from autumnal hues, samples for classes she had taught only once, and a Wedding Bouquet quilt for a couple who had called off their engagement a month before the wedding. Diane lingered over that top, sighing with regret. It truly was beautiful, perhaps one of her best, but it seemed bad luck to bestow it upon another couple, so off to the UFO pile it had gone.

  She had almost given up the search as hopeless when at the bottom of the pile she discovered one of her early works—a red, green, gold, and white quilt of twenty-four ten-inch Providence blocks framed by a border of sawtooth triangles. Inspecting it, she was pleased to see that although it was only the third or fourth quilt she had attempted, her stitches were small, strong, and even, and her piecing accuracy had been consistently good, if not flawless. Of the three tops in contention, this one best suited Agnes’s decorating scheme. It was larger than the Dolley Madison’s Star, but if she started quilting it right away, she might be able to finish it by morning.

  As for the teasing she would endure if her friends knew what had inspired her to make it—well, she could only hope that enough time had passed since she’d made the quilt and no one would ever suspect. Agnes might, but she was kind and discreet, and she would never dream of exposing a friend to ridicule, especially a friend whom she herself had taught to quilt.

  Diane’s mother had quilted, and her mother before her, as well as several aunts and great-aunts. Yet although she had grown up surrounded by quilts and the women who made them, she had never felt the slightest inclination to learn to sew. Why should she invest months or years into making a single quilt when so many other people were happy to make quilts for her?