Reflections on the Ninth Week of Fall - Rainbow Lady

Stained Glass Rainbow Wall Hanging

Wednesday afternoon, I bent over my sewing machine, squinted, and maneuvered a stained-glass rainbow wall hanging under my sewing machine’s walking foot. The machine crept at its lowest speed. The jabbing needle formed a cat outline in black thread. 

Outside the loft window, bare branches scraped the November-gray sky. Below me, sleep breaths resounded from the sofa where, after my husband’s back to back trips to Cleveland, Spence napped with our three kittens. Over the NPR live stream on my computer tablet, Adam Schiff questioned Gordon Sondland’s assertion that “Everyone was in the loop.”

The thread looped forming a cat paw, and I stared at the bright red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple stripes. Despite the disharmony coming through the speaker, I chuckled remembering Rainbow Lady, a nickname given to me the third weekend of October at the Whitehall Camp and Conference Center in Emlenton, Pennsylvania.

Amid the chatter of twenty-three quilters and their twenty-three zinging sewing machines, I had sewed strips of bright colored fabric to form hand-size rainbows—straight not arched—while other quilters created queen-size quilts.

Unfazed by her two hour drive from Pittsburgh, Beth, a guest of the guild, walked between sewing tables in the long, rectangular conference room. Standing taller than the other quilters, she greeted everyone she passed with a never-ending smile that glowed through her cheeks and brightened her eyes. After she plunked her gear three tables over from me she called, “Did you get a seat by a window, Janet?”

I’d only met Beth once, a year ago at a quilting retreat. How she remembered, that I liked sewing by a window to gaze at nature, flabbergasted me. 

  

Throughout the retreat, her sunny disposition constantly shined down on other quilters and me. When she saw my Halloween sweatshirt, Beth cooed, “You look so cute.” When I dashed to the kitchen to fetch paper towels for a quilter who spilled coffee on her rooster material, Beth shouted, “Look at her go! Wonder Woman.” When I wielded my rotary cutter to slice the rainbow strips into blocks, she commented, “How do you get your lines so straight? They’re perfect—not wavy like so many people sew.”

Peering at my project. she dubbed me Rainbow Lady.

Rainbow Blocks

Mid Saturday, I set the rainbows on my sewing table and reached underneath into the Styrofoam box for my pill tin and two cloth napkins. Clutching them, I strode to the kitchen—off the middle of the sewing room—and fetched the slice of chicken pot pie I’d left in the refrigerator. While the pie heated in the microwave, I made a side trip to the ladies room. 

I carried my lunch to Diane’s table to chat with her while I ate. Diane, who had arranged the retreat for guild members and friends, moved patterns and her cutting mat to make space. I spread my napkin, set down the pie, and reached into my pocket for the pill tin. Handkerchief. Phone. No tin. Sheesh. I am the Wonder Woman of losing objects while sitting in place. Where had I lost the pills?

I searched my sewing table, the Styrofoam food box, the kitchen, the bathroom, and my pocket. No pill tin. I returned to my sewing table and searched everywhere two more times.

Beth looked up from her coral colored quilt top. “What are you looking for, Rainbow Lady?”  

“My pills.” I stooped to reexamine the Styrofoam food box.

Beth stood. “What do they look like?”

“They’re in a green tin the size of a needle case. The tin has a cartoon dinosaur on the top.” 

Tammy, the quilter across from Beth and owner of Fox’s quilt store in Meadville, stopped her machine. “Where did you see them last?” 

“In my hand.” I held up my empty hand. Then I reached in both of my pockets again. One empty. One with a handkerchief and phone.

Beth looked under rainbow blocks on my sewing table. 

Leaving her, I trudged back to Diane, crouched to peer under her table. No pills. I lifted my napkin. Still no pills. 

I gave up. 

The tin would turn up sometime. When it did, I could take the pills. I take vitamin D because I don’t eat dairy products. To lower my cholesterol, I take fish oil which my friend Diana, who writes “The Medical Insider," says I don’t need. Nothing necessary. Not life threatening. No worries.

Beth shouted. “Nobody eats until Janet finds her pills!”

Machines stopped zinging.

Quilters walked through the sewing room with heads bent toward the floor.

Double sheesh!  

Swallowing a mouthful of warm pot pie, I jumped out of my chair and thrust my hand into my pocket for the umpteenth time. I pulled out the phone and set it on my napkin. I pulled out the handkerchief. I reached in again, and my fingers touched the tin. I pulled it out and waved the tin over my head. “I found it. Thanks everyone. It was in my pocket.” 

Guffaws erupted in the sewing room.

Face heated from blushing, I sat and took another bite.

Diane looked over from her Halloween cat quilt. “I lose things like that all the time.” 

Machines zinged. Chatter resumed. Beth returned to her quilt.

That had all happened a month ago. 

Back in the loft this past Wednesday afternoon, my mind returned to the skeletal trees outside and quilted cats on the stained glass rainbow hanging.

Thud. An unexpected kitten attack.

Ande, our biggest kitten and the one who chews every wire he finds, scampered between the sewing machine and the thread holder. He opened his mouth wide and bit the dangling thread.

I pulled soggy thread from Ande’s sharp teeth, set him on the floor, and rethreaded the machine with dry thread.

While I quilted another cat outline, Devin Nunes’s voice boomed through the tablet. “Aren’t you just guessing, Mr. Sondland?” 

The House impeachment hearings could use a person like Beth, someone who spreads sunshine wherever she goes—the true Rainbow Lady.

Beth and Janet