Reflections on the Ninth Week of Spring – Reinventing the Charm (Part 2)

Mansfield Park Quilt - Front

    The evening of April 4^th, I walked into the back room of Gail’s quilt shop where whoops and exclamations erupted.

    “Wow.”

    “Ta-da.”

    “We did it!”

    Bordered, quilted, and bound, our group falling leaf quilt hung on the display wall. And all seventeen members had taken part in the quilt’s construction.

    “Okay. Okay.” Pat, chair of the Country Charms quilt show, stood and passed out raffle tickets. “You’re each in charge of selling twenty tickets.” She stared at us over the top of her glasses. “Material, batting, and long arm quilting came to five hundred forty-six dollars and sixty-five cents.”

    We gulped in unison.

    Pat shook her finger. “We have to recoup our expenses.”

    Linda, president of the guild, said, “We should leave the quilt on the wall. People will see it and buy tickets from Gail.”

    “No.” Pat tapped her finger on the table. “I’ll show the quilt to people at my church and sell more tickets.”

    Not me. Walk up to friends and family with a corny grin and ask them to buy raffle tickets? I wrote my name on the back of eighteen and gave Pat thirty dollars.

Ticket by ticket.

Dollar by dollar.

    A week and a half later, on Friday the thirteenth, Spence and I drove home from an Allegheny College play in which a couple set fire to their neighbor’s house. Over the car radio, President Trump announced he’d bombed Syria. And, after checking that the fire they’d started to clear brush behind their barn had burned out, Gail and her husband Lee went to bed.

    While they slept, a spark flared. The barn ignited and set the back of the quilt shop ablaze.

    A passing motorist called the fire department but not before the fire consumed the barn, the back of the shop, the guild’s quilt racks, and our boxes of quilt show supplies. Smoke damaged material in the front of the shop.

Rack by rack.

Box by box.

    Gail went into shock, and Pat, as if fussy cut, went into a tizzy.

    “Gail is closed until further notice. That means we cannot collect or judge quilts at the shop,” Pat emailed. “My initial reaction was to cancel show but, rethinking what that would entail, I need your input. We can borrow racks from the IQ guild. Should we or shouldn't we continue with the show? In the meantime, keep Gail in your prayers.”

    I hit “reply all” first. “I suggest we continue with the show. But, there are so many loose ends, we should meet so you don’t have to deal with all this alone, Pat.”

    The only other response from the group? “We should cancel the show out of respect for Gail and Lee. We can still sell tickets for the quilt and make a little more on it.”

    Then silence.

    While I waited for Pat’s decision, one question surged through my mind.

    Were we having a quilt show or not?

    You’re wondering about the Mansfield Park quilt.

    Should I hustle to get it done?

    You need to finish someday.

    But if we don’t have the show―

    Stop dithering and quilt.

    I climbed to the loft, made quilt sandwiches then machine quilted cross in a cross and Irish chain patterns.

Cross by cross.

Chain by chain.

Mansfield Park Quilt - Cross in a Cross Block

    Finally, Marion, the quilter who co-chaired the 2016 quilt show with me, emailed. “Linda said she and Pat are meeting Tuesday morning at Our Lady of Lourdes to make plans. They would welcome your help.”

    So Tuesday morning, four of us―Pat, Linda, Peggie (my ride-sharing neighbor who’d stated she would quit the guild after the show), and me―sat at a table in the fellowship hall.

    Pat spread papers in front of her. “We’ve invested too much time and money to stop now. I’ll bring IQ’s racks Friday morning. Maybe the judge can come early to judge the quilts before we hang―”

    “I already called her.” Linda pushed her shoulders back. “The judge is coming at four Friday afternoon.”

    Pat frowned and checked an item on her paper. “Then she’ll have to judge the quilts after we hang them. Registration Thursday?”

    We settled that Pat and Peggie would register quilts at the church, Linda and I would register them at Fox’s quilt shop, and I’d change store fliers that advertised registering quilts at Gail’s.

    Linda pushed her chair back. “Will Gail still come as a vendor?”

   Pat shrugged. “I’ll ask her this afternoon. I know she hadn’t unpacked the truck with her supplies for vending at shows so if she’s feeling up to coming―”

    “I need to know as soon as possible,” Linda stood, “so I can call another vendor if she isn’t coming.”

    Pat spread her arms wide. “I’ll talk to Gail today and get back to you tonight.”

    “Do that.” Linda walked toward the kitchen.

    Pat shook her fists in the air. “Linda is driving me crazy. It’s like oil and water.”

    Peggie slid out of her chair and tiptoed away.

    Continuing to unravel, Pat said, “Why doesn’t Linda just let me run the show? We’re not co-chairs!”

    I put my hand on Pat’s arm. “You’re doing a great job. The show will be lovely.”

    “Well, it’s the last one we’ll ever have! Gail’s old. She’s not going to rebuild.” Pat hit her fist against the table. “That means the guild dissolves. We can’t continue the quilt guild without a quilt shop.” She stomped off.

    Dissolve the guild? My throat tied in French knots.

    Holding a cup of coffee, Linda stopped beside me. “See you Thursday at Fox’s.”

    “Pat said she’d dissolve the guild.” I glanced down at my empty hands and back up at Linda. “Pat can’t do that, can she?”

    With a smile appliquéd to her face, Linda shook her head. “We’ll hold a meeting after the quilt show and let all the members vote on what to do.”

Bicker by bicker.

Plan by plan.

    Back at home, I fastened support bands around both wrists, threaded a needle, and blind stitched the binding to the back of my quilt. Forty-one hours before quilt registration opened, I tied the last knot in the quilt. Done!

Thread by thread.

Knot by knot.

    Saturday May 5 dawned sunny and mild. Before the doors to the quilt show opened, guild members strolled down rows of quilts, each one a treasure.

• Double Wedding Ring, 
• Dresden Plate, 
• Wool Appliqué,
• Embroidered panel,
• Hexi Flower Garden,
• Nine Patch, 
• Trip Around the World,
• Minis, table runners, pillows, and more.

  

  Butterfly Quilt

    Fingers pointed, oohs escaped, and eyes checked for ribbons. We giggled, hugged each other, and stopped by Gail’s table to gaze at fabrics and patterns that survived the fire in her truck.

    “These are discounted.” She pointed to overlapping cuts of fabric on the left. “They were smoke damaged so my daughter washed and ironed them.”

    We drifted to our posts for the show. I sat behind the door prize table under the guild’s huge falling leaf quilt and with a view of my Mansfield Park quilt hanging at the end of the third row.

    One hundred twenty-eight visitors strolled past me and down the aisles. They pointed fingers, oohed, and gazed with delighted smiles.

    Mid afternoon two petite women, one clutching her handbag and the other walking with an arthritic limp, gawked at the falling leaf quilt. The first said, “Oh, my. “It’s so big. That took a lot of work.”

    Her friend tilted her head. “And the corners of the squares meet.”

    “All seventeen of us worked on the quilt,” I said.

    The women gaped. 

   “Imagine,” said the first.

    “Amazing so many women could cooperated on one quilt,” said the second.

    From the raffle ticket table, Linda waved her camera at me. “Help me gather the guild by the raffle quilt. I want a group picture.”

    I walked down the aisles, touched each member on the shoulder, and delivered the summons. “Linda wants us up front for a photo.”

    They groaned.

   “Do we have to?”

    “Her picture would be better without us.”

    “I’ll take the picture for her.”

    Members moseyed to the raffle quilt where we frowned, waited for others, and milled, as if sorting pieces on a display board. Everyone moved toward the back of the group. With time, we stitched ourselves into a crazy quilt arrangement.

    Linda focused the camera then handed it to a young visitor before joining the group.

    “Take at least four,” I called from the back row. “We need multiple chances to get a decent picture.

Visitor by visitor.

Smile by smile.

    And how did my Mansfield Park quilt fare?

    I lost to a corpse.

    Well, not literally.

    The quilter was alive when she appliquéd butterflies and hand quilted. She died earlier this year and left the quilt to her daughter-in-law Sandy, our neighbor and tax collector who lopes past our house daily. “Mom would point to a butterfly and say whose dress was made from that material,” Sandy told Spence and me one afternoon when she stopped on her walk. “The quilt’s so beautiful I wanted to enter it in Mom’s honor.”

    The butterfly quilt wasn’t in my pieced, machine-quilted category. But, after all the months of sewing, a little levity makes not winning a ribbon more tolerable.

    And from my vantage point at the door prize table, I watched two young women study my quilt as if preparing for a college art exam. With heads tilting towards each other, one woman traced an outside cross and an inside cross with her finger. Then she framed a Cross in a Cross block with her hands. Her friend framed a Four Square 2 block. They pointed to the gold squares running diagonally through each block and forming diamonds on the quilt. Stepping back, the women exchanged grins. Were they agreeing with the judge’s written comment at the bottom of a sheet of starred techniques?

    “Great construction work!”

Star by star.

Construction by construction.

    The following Wednesday, all but two of the now sixteen member guild gathered around a long table in the church’s fellowship hall.

    Linda started the discussion. “We got lots of compliments on the quilt show.”

    “And we did lots less work.” Pat nodded to Linda across the table. “No pie baking and the smaller racks were easy to assemble. We should use that size if we have another show.”

    Have another show? What about her threat to dissolve the guild?

    Pat pulled out her financial report and read a list of numbers including “. . . and we received five hundred ninety-six dollars from raffle ticket sales.”

    “Gee,” someone moaned. “We only made thirty dollars on the raffle quilt.”

    Actually, we’d made forty-nine dollars and thirty-five cents―the equivalent of each member donating two dollars and ninety cents. We could have saved a lot of time and work.

    Without bickering, we decided to sew pin cushions at the next meeting, celebrate all our birthdays by exchanging favorite notions in July, and have a quilt retreat in September or October.

    Gail leaned in. “I want to let you know work has started on the store. I’m going to participate in the Shop Hop in July. If the building’s not done, I’ll rent a tent.”

    Gail’s rebuilding, the successful show, and the cooperative sewing on the raffle quilt had reinvented the charm in our guild.

    Then Pat said, “We should combine the business meeting and fun night so we only come out once a month.”

    A member, who’d been suggesting that for years because she didn’t want to drive from Meadville twice a month after work, sat at attention. “I move we only meet once a month.

    Our newest member said, “I second it.”

    Linda looked down the table. “All in favor raise your hand.”

    “WAIT a minute,” I blurted out. Weren’t meetings to discuss proposals before making decisions? “I have a question.”

    Before I asked my question, someone said, “Wouldn’t that entail changing our constitution?”

    Despite the reinvented charm, our crazy quilted guild still deserves the reputation for bickering.

Quilt by quilt.

Show by show.

Guild Gathering and Waiting for Others by Raffle Quilt - photo by MM