Reflections on the Thirteenth Week of Fall - Worth Every Knot and Stitch

Janet Pinning Quilt Sandwich

“Uh-oh.” I scowled at the waves of cotton fabric cascading off all sides of my friend’s dining room table and puddling over my feet. I needed a new plan. 

Darlene frowned from the doorway of her kitchenette. “Too small?” 

She meant the table where I’d hoped we could center the quilt sandwich—dappled gray backing, cotton batting, and the patchwork top her mom had created years ago. Darlene discovered the quilt top when she’d cleaned her mom’s house after her mom moved into a nursing home. The top surprised Darlene. Made from squares of leftover fabric her mom used to sew clothes for Darlene and her sister, the quilt held memories for my long-time friend—a friend since our middle school daughters introduced us ages ago. 

Darlene had never quilted. She didn’t have a sewing machine. When she’d unfolded the top with reverence and asked for advice on making the top into a quilt, I figured she could manage a prayer quilt—loop yarn through the layers and pray while tying the yarn.

To help my friend with the process, I’d arrived at her South Euclid, Ohio condo after a meeting in honor of Jane Austen’s two hundred forty-fourth birthday. Spending the night and celebrating Jane’s actual birthday with Darlene quilting, an activity Jane did with her mother and sister, made sense to me.

I’d figured we could make the quilt sandwich on the table, smooth the layers, and tie knots from the center out. But centering six square yards of fabric on the six square foot table hadn’t work. The new plan meant the floor, and as a grandmother of twins in college and a retired nurse, Darlene’s floor-crawling days were past.

“We need to use the floor. I’ll get a broom.” If I smoothed and pinned the layers, she could still work at the table. I strode to the utility closet in her kitchen. 

“That makes too much dust for my allergies.” She followed and reached around me for an upright. “I’ll vacuum. It won’t take long.”

While the vacuum purred over the smooth laminate flooring, I huffed and pushed the table against the wall. I moved a couple chairs and slid aside the ironing board. We had plenty of room for Darlene’s fabric purchase, one hundred percent cotton because of her allergies.

“I am getting very extravagant & spending all my Money

. . . in a Linendraper’s . . .I was tempted by a pretty

coloured muslin, and bought 10 yds of it . . .”

Letter from Jane Austen to her sister Casandra

April 11, 1811

Scooping up the soft gray cloth with one arm, I fumbled through the folds for the corners. I handed two corners to my friend, kept the others, and slipped out of my shoes so I didn’t dirty the quilt area. “Lay the right side against the floor.” I walked across the room. 

Bending at our waists, we centered the fabric in the open space and tugged at the sides until the fabric lay straight.

“Uh-oh.” I scowled at the wrinkled fabric spreading like agitated-waves on a lake in a rainstorm. 

The night before, I’d knelt by her bathtub and submerged the smooth fabric in a couple inches of water. A tinge of gray dye and bubbles of laundry sizing dirtied the water. After three tub rinses, we threw the fabric into the dryer. With the color bled and fabric shrunk, we took turns pressing the fabric. That gave us plenty of time to discuss her twin grandchildren.

“I won’t see Tiree this Christmas. He’s working at an Amazon fulfillment center.” 

Memories of multiple radio stories describing mistreatment of workers at fulfillment centers made me groan.

She spritzed water onto a stubborn crease. “Yeah. I don’t like that job either.” She ironed. “Jadzia will be home, but she’s working long hours to get money for her next semester in Mexico. She won’t have much time to visit.” 

Despite hours of pressing Sunday night, the cotton cloth still had wrinkles Monday morning. It needed stretched smooth and taped to the floor. “Do you have masking tape?”

Darlene’s face scrunched in puzzlement. “No-o-o.” She clearly doubted my sanity.

“How about packing tape?”

She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with two roles of scotch-tape. “This is the only tape I have.”

Sheesh. Run out for masking tape or try the scotch-tape? Looking at my socks and dreading the effort of putting on winter gear, I took a roll of tape from Darlene. “We can try.” I plopped onto my bottom and pulled off a two-inch piece of tape.

It twisted and stuck to itself. 

I stuck it to the back of my hand, pulled another piece, and stretched it from the fabric to the floor. It stuck. With more confidence, I placed a second piece a foot away. The first popped off. I stuck it to my hand. 

Darlene stepped behind me. “Maybe the tape would hold if you made the strips longer?”

Pulling four inches off the roll, I pressed the tape onto the fabric and floor. I added another length beside the first. After taping three feet of fabric down, I moved to the other side of the quilt and pointed to where I’d sat. “Stand on the tape so it doesn’t pop off when I pull.”

She kicked off her shoes and stood on the tape.

I tugged, the fabric stretched, and I pressed a new piece of tape. Letting go, I stared at the tape holding the fabric in place and exhaled the breath I hadn’t known I’d held. It worked.

In our shuffling-stocking-foot, bottom-sliding ballet, we worked our way around the backing until I stretched and taped every inch into calm-lake smooth.

“Wow.” Darlene’s face lit like sunshine bursting through clouds. “That’s amazing.”

Amazing would be to get the other layers smoothed on top and the quilt sandwich pinned before the tape sprung lose and the backing crinkled. Again. I grabbed the batting we’d shrunk the night before. After spreading it, I crawled, smoothed it with my hands, and chuckled because I couldn’t imagine Jane Austen crawling on the floor to sew.

Niece Marianne shared the memory of her aunt “. . . Jane sitting quietly in the library at Godmersham, her sewing on her lap, saying nothing for a long while. Suddenly Jane would burst out laughing, jump up . . . run across the room  . . . and write something down. Then she would return to her fireside seat and go on stitching quietly as before.”

Jane Austen, Obstinate Heart: A Biography by Valerie

Grosvenor Myer p. 143

My friend and I held the corners of her mother’s top and eased it onto the center of the batting. The batting should have stuck out on all sides. It only stuck out from two.

“Uh-oh.” Darlene’s face wrinkled in worry.  

Mind didn’t. “We can fix that.” I waved my hands at her feet. “Stand on the other side.” 

While she stood, I tugged.

Cotton batting stretched out from under the top.

“Do we need to tape it?”

“No.” Thank goodness. “We need to pin it.” Crawling to the middle, I stuck a safety pin down through the layers. It pricked the floor. “I hope the pins don’t scratch your floor.”

“It’s just a floor.” She bent her knees for a closer look. “If I sat on a step stool, I might be able to help.”

A step stool on the quilt wouldn’t help. “Keep me company by sharing your memories of the quilt.”

She pulled a chair up to the side of the quilt and pointed to a yellow, blue, and green square. “Mom made a sundress for me out that material. It was my favorite dress.” She sighed. “Mom made all my clothes until I was in high school, and I told her to stop because the other kids didn’t wear homemade clothes.” Darlene shook her head. “I wasn’t too smart back then.” Her eyes surveyed the quilt. “And that fabric with the blue, green . . .” Her wiggling finger pointed toward a corner.

I reached over and patted a print with a black background. “This flowered one?”

“Yeah. I think Mom made me a halter top out of that.”

We fell into silence while I pinned and remembered clothes my mother had made me. In high school, I hadn’t told her to stop sewing me clothes because, when I worked at the public library, the librarians commented behind my back, “Look at that outfit. It’s too gorgeous to waste on a child.”

Standing to stretch, I fetched Playing Jane Austen. “Read while I work.” 

Changing voices for characters, Darlene read. I pinned. 

“Miss Bates: Dear! dear! where can the letter be? I had it but a moment ago . . . Ah! here it is. I was sure it could not be far off; but I had put my huswife upon it, you see, without being aware, and so it was quite hid, but I had it in my hand so very lately that I was almost sure it must be on the table.”

Playing Jane Austen by Rosina Filippi page 40

We laughed at Miss Bates’s rambling speeches and our own tendency to lose things.

Two plays and two hundred twenty-five pins later, I finished.

I pulled tape off the floor, stuck the pieces onto the back of my hand making a translucent blob, and lifted the pinned quilt sandwich to the table. Fabric cascaded over the sides and puddled onto my feet. The layers stayed centered.

“Now you’ve got to tie yarn in each place I inserted a pin. Start from the center and work out.”

Demonstrating how to thread a fat-eyed needle with the brown yarn Darlene had chosen, I pinched yarn between my thumb and finger, shoved the needle over the yarn, and pulled. “You try.”

After the seventh try, she got it. “Rocking the needle back and forth helps.”

Holding a scrap corner of backing and batting, I shoved the needled through the layers and pulled. “Uh-oh.” The fat yarn stopped the needle from sliding through the layers.

Darlene’s face darkened in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“The yarn’s hard to pull through the fabric.” Like the little engine that could, I tugged, tugged, tugged making the yarn pop through. After I sewed varying lengths of yarn through the practice sandwich, my friend decided to use one and three-quarter inch ties.

I let her try looping yarn through the quilt sandwich.

She stuck the needle in and tugged. “This will be a matter for patience.” She tugged. “I’ll clip my fingernails.” She tugged. “I’ll get plastic tips for my fingers to help me grip the needle.”

By mid afternoon when I had to leave, she’d tied one knot in the center of her quilt. Two hundred twenty-four to go. But I had confidence my friend would finish the quilt. She would warm herself with its layers and memories. 

Years from now, like many people admire Jane Austen’s diamond patchwork quilt at Chawton House, Darlene’s twin grandchildren’s grandchildren will cherish her mother-daughter quilt, a family treasure worth every knot and stitch.

Darlene Reading Jane Austen Plays