Elm Creek Quilts [08] The Christmas Quilt (10 page)

“Perhaps it was lost in the mail.”

“Oh, sure. That’s fair. When in doubt, blame it on the hardworking postal service instead of my malicious mother.”

Sylvia was at a loss. “How does Matt feel about all this?”

“You know him, the eternal optimist. He still believes that once my mother has a chance to get to know him, she’ll accept him. I’m a realist. I know it would take a miracle for that to happen.”

“Christmas is a time for miracles.”

“This would take a miracle on the order of the parting of the Red Sea, and I’m not holding my breath.” Sarah shook her head and slid fabric beneath the presser foot of the sewing machine. “See, Sylvia, your family has its Christmas traditions: German cookies and decorating a tree in the ballroom. My family has ours: using Christmas gifts to express our spite and taking extra early-morning shifts so we can avoid our family. Maybe now you can understand why I’d rather stay here.”

The bitterness in her young friend’s voice pained Sylvia. Her mother had acted with appalling rudeness, but even so, Sylvia could not help marveling at the pettiness of it all. To harbor such anger and resentment over a Christmas gift! Sylvia regretted that Carol Mallory had been so unkind to steadfast, good-natured Matt, but she could not condone Sarah’s decision to keep the two apart because of it. She rather agreed with Matt. Surely if Carol had more opportunity to discover what a fine young man he was, her disapproval would lessen until it eventually ceased.

Sylvia sat pondering while Sarah worked on the Christmas Quilt, ruefully aware that her plan to bring together Sarah and her mother had been doomed from the beginning. Their relationship was clearly in worse shape than Sylvia had realized, and no thrown-together Christmas reunion would rectify things. Christmas was the season of peace, but somehow people often forgot to include the harmony of their own family in their prayers for peace on earth and goodwill toward all. The stress and excitement of the holidays often laid bare the hairline cracks in the facade of ostensibly functional families. No wonder Sarah preferred to work on another family’s abandoned quilt than on her own family’s unresolved disagreements.

Sarah did seem to be making remarkable progress on the quilt, although Sylvia was not quite certain how she intended for those very dissimilar blocks to come together harmoniously. She had attached border sashing to some of Lucinda’s Feathered Stars and joined four together in pairs. With a few added seams, Eleanor’s holly sprays had been transformed into open plumes, which Sarah was in the midst of attaching to Claudia’s Variable Stars.

“That’s a sure way to ruin it,” muttered Sylvia. Louder, over the cheerful clatter of the sewing machine, she added, “Sarah, dear, I thought I told you not to bother including Claudia’s blocks in the quilt.”

Amused, Sarah said, “You suggested that I could leave them out if I thought they would ruin the quilt, and I told you that I wouldn’t dream of leaving her out of a family quilt. I measured, and you’re right; her blocks vary in size almost a half-inch, but my layout will account for that.”

“But they’re so plain and simple,” protested Sylvia. “They aren’t as intricate as the blocks my mother and great-aunt made.”

“That’s precisely why they work so well.” Sarah continued sewing, completely indifferent to Sylvia’s consternation. “Sometimes a simple block is needed to set off more elaborate designs. You taught me that.”

Sylvia had always suspected that someday her preaching would come back to haunt her. “This is a very special quilt. You shouldn’t include a block of inferior quality for sentimental reasons.”

“A quilt, like a family, doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to be inclusive.”

“That’s a remarkable philosophy from someone who refuses to give her mother a second chance to truly get to know her son-in-law.”

“Said the woman who held a grudge against her sister for fifty years.”

Sylvia had no reply.

“I’m sorry,” said Sarah quickly. “I know what happened between you two was much more than a grudge. I didn’t mean to make light of it.”

But Sylvia knew Sarah was not entirely wrong. “Think nothing of it. We’ve exchanged strong words before and survived.”

Sarah searched her face for a moment to be sure Sylvia was not angry, frowned briefly in uncertainty, and returned to her work with an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

Sylvia watched as the hapless Variable Star blocks were joined with her mother’s exquisite appliqué and knew that somewhere, Claudia was laughing.

Sylvia had once overheard her father say that she had come into the world looking for a fight, and as the Bergstrom closest to her in age, Claudia had quickly become her unwitting rival. Sylvia, naturally, saw the situation differently. It was Claudia who was constantly competing with her, Claudia who sparked the arguments and stirred up animosity and yet somehow always managed to appear blameless to the adults of the family.

Even as a child Sylvia understood why adults preferred Claudia. She was such an obvious favorite that Sylvia almost did not blame them for it. Claudia was two years older, but since Sylvia was bright for her age and tall, everyone treated them as if they were the same age, and comparisons were unavoidable. Claudia was the beauty; she had been blessed with their mother’s grace and the best features of the Bergstroms. The oldest members of the family declared that she was the very image of great-grandmother Anneke, a famous beauty of her day, but they respected their ancestors too much to hold any of them responsible for Sylvia’s appearance, even though her remarkable height, strong chin, and assertive posture were unmistakably Bergstrom. Claudia’s hair, the rich brown hue of maple sugar, hung down her back nearly to her waist in glossy waves, while Sylvia’s, the color of the burnt bits scraped off toast, tended to be snarled and windblown from the time she spent outdoors hanging around the stables, pestering her father with pleas to be allowed to ride. Sylvia was the better student, mastering her lessons easily and impatient for more, but Claudia won the teachers’ hearts with her obedience and charming manners. She never failed to be sweet and cheerful, even as she misspelled half the words in her themes. For her part, Sylvia was moody and sensitive, and she could not hide her resentment at being compared unfavorably to the lovely creature who had passed through that teacher’s classroom two years before. For as long as Sylvia could remember, she had been convinced that she was a terrible disappointment to their mother, an inferior second effort after the overwhelming success that was her firstborn.

From an early age, each of the sisters had struggled to prove herself better than the other in every conceivable quality or activity. Sylvia won in academics, quilting, and innate ability with horses; Claudia, in everything else. Still, although Sylvia was best in what she considered the most important categories, her success was unsatisfying because Claudia seemed unaware of it. While Sylvia’s report cards gave Claudia no alternative but to concede she was the better student, Claudia feared horses and did not care how well Sylvia rode or how docilely the strongest stallions responded to her attentions. She also would never admit, even when Sylvia confronted her with side-by-side comparisons of their stitches, that Sylvia was the more adept quilter. No matter how often Sylvia proved herself to be her sister’s equal or better, Claudia refused to treat her as anything but a tag-along little sister, a nuisance, an afterthought.

Quilting—which for so many women and girls was an enjoyable, harmonious activity that encouraged friendship, sharing, and community—only sharpened their competitive natures. Their first quilting lesson with their mother turned into a race to see which girl could complete the most Nine-Patch blocks and win the right to sleep beneath the finished quilt first. When Sylvia gained an insurmountable lead, Claudia burst into tears, declared that she hated Sylvia, and ran from the room, scattering her meager pile of Nine-Patch blocks as she went. When Eleanor found out the reason for her outburst, she told Sylvia to apologize to her sister—which Sylvia did. “I’m sorry I sewed faster than you,” she told Claudia, which outraged her sister and displeased all the grown-ups.

Sylvia ended up finishing that quilt alone. She gave it to a cousin, Uncle William and Aunt Nellie’s four-year-old daughter, since Claudia would not allow it into their room.

A more sensible pair of girls would have avoided working together on a quilt again, but their second attempt came a year later, when their mother announced that she was expecting another child. Originally each girl had planned to sew her own quilt for the baby, but when they began to argue over which quilt their new brother or sister would use first, Eleanor decreed they would work together: Sylvia would choose the colors, Claudia the pattern, and each would sew precisely half of the blocks necessary for the top. It seemed like a reasonable plan, until Claudia did the unthinkable and chose the Turkey Tracks pattern. Not only was this a challenging block Sylvia doubted her sister could make well, but according to their grandmother, it also had a history of foreboding consequences. Once better known as the Wandering Foot, its name had been changed to divert the bad luck associated with it. Legend told that a boy given a Wandering Foot quilt would never be content to stay in one place, but would forever be restless, roaming the world, never settling down. A girl receiving such a quilt would be doomed to an even worse fate, so bleak that Grandmother refused to describe it. Eleanor and Claudia had heard Grandmother’s warnings as often as Sylvia, but they laughed off Sylvia’s concerns and told her not to be upset by silly superstitions. Defeated, all Sylvia could do was to select her lucky colors, blue and yellow, and hope that would be enough to offset the pattern’s influence.

After their mother died, the fire went out of the girls’ competitiveness around the quilting frame. Without their mother to impress, without a chance that she would finally admit a preference for the handiwork of one daughter over the other, there seemed no point to it.

Less than three years after losing their mother, Sylvia and Claudia decided to collaborate on a quilt once again, out of necessity rather than any anticipation of enjoyment. In January 1933, while browsing through a catalog from which their father often purchased farm tools, they learned about a marvelous quilt competition sponsored by Sears, Roebuck, and Company. If their quilt passed elimination rounds at their local store and at the regional level, it would be displayed in a special pavilion at the World’s Fair in Chicago and be eligible for a $2,500 First Prize. Neither Sylvia nor Claudia had ever possessed such an enormous sum of money, and they were determined to enter.

In order to complete an entire masterpiece quilt by the May 15 deadline, they had no alternative but to work together. Claudia interpreted the rules to mean that each quilt must be the work of a single quilter, so she signed their entry form under the name “Claudia Sylvia Bergstrom,” provoking Sylvia’s ire when she discovered her billing had been reduced to her sister’s middle name, or so everyone would believe. A more significant point of contention was the design of the quilt. Sylvia wanted to create an original pictorial quilt inspired by the World’s Fair theme of “A Century of Progress,” but Claudia thought the judges would be more impressed by a traditional pattern presented in flawless, intricate needlework. After wasting several weeks debating their design, they agreed to a compromise between tradition and novelty. Sylvia designed a central appliqué medallion depicting various scenes from Colonial times until the present day, which Claudia framed in a border of pieced blocks. To Sylvia’s exasperation, Claudia selected the Odd Fellow’s Chain pattern, squandering an opportunity to select a pattern with a more appropriately symbolic name. Sylvia did not complain, however, since it was a visually striking block her sister could handle more or less successfully, and it did inspire an intriguing title for their work: “Chain of Progress.”

Despite their unpromising start, the sisters agreed on one point: “Chain of Progress” was the best quilt either had ever made. They took first place at the local competition in Harrisburg, but lost at the regional level in Philadelphia. Later that year, when their father took his three children by train to see the World’s Fair, the sisters agreed on a second point: Their quilt was easily as lovely as any of the twenty-nine finalists displayed. Claudia was so disappointed by the loss of the admiration and status that would have accompanied a victory that Sylvia hadn’t the heart to suggest that her uneven quilting stitches had probably cost them a place among the finalists.

Sylvia did not mind the loss as much as her sister. Though times were still hard and the Bergstroms had to watch every penny, their father had splurged on the trip to the World’s Fair, reward enough for Sylvia. She also knew that, at age thirteen, she had many quilt competitions and blue ribbons in her future.

Time passed and other concerns left little room in her thoughts for mulling over her disappointment—namely, her younger brother Richard’s progress in school. He was an apt pupil when it came to learning about horses—which pleased their father—but although he was bright, he had little patience for the classroom. Headstrong and mischievous, he dodged Sylvia’s efforts to tutor him, and if she left him alone with a lesson to study, she would return later to find that he had run off to the barn, or the orchard, or more likely than not, the stables.

Sylvia blamed that Wandering Foot quilt.

In spite of his reluctance to study, he was clever enough to do well on his school work even when he only gave it half his attention. That, his kind heart, and his charm were his saving graces at school. He had light brown, wavy hair that brightened to gold in the summer, long-lashed, green-brown eyes that his sisters envied, and a dimple that appeared in his right cheek when he grinned, which was often. The teachers adored him and smiled when they called him a rascal, and he was popular among his classmates—not because he followed the crowd, but because he could usually persuade the crowd that his way of doing things was more fun.