Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters (31 page)

She gave him fifteen minutes, then went outside to find out what was going on. She discovered him on one knee beside the chair, vigorously rubbing off the peeling white paint with sandpaper.

“Where did you find that old thing?” she asked.

“On the Gruebers’ curb. They threw it out.”

Gretchen could see why. “What are you doing?”

He turned stiffly to face her, straining the limit of his back’s flexibility. “Fixing it.”

“It needs a lot of fixing.” She folded her arms over her chest. “And when you’re done?”

“I’m going to sell it, unless I get so attached that I can’t part with it.”

“I see.” She watched as he returned to sanding the chair. “Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch sound all right to you?”

“Suits me fine.”

“I’ll call you when it’s ready.” She left him to his work.

True to his word, Joe repaired and finished the chair beautifully and sold it for twenty dollars. He took on a bureau and matching chest next, and sold both to a shop in Sewickley for fifty dollars. Within months, neighbors and strangers alike were stopping by the garage at all hours of the day to browse through the finished pieces on display or to schedule an appointment to drop off worn or damaged furniture for him to refurbish. Joe made a sign and hung it above the entrance to the garage: “Joseph Hartley: Fine Furniture Repaired and Restored.” He worked when he felt able, rested when the strain on his back and legs became too much. He checked out library books on cabinet making and
woodworking, and soon he began designing and building his own original pieces. An antique shop in downtown Sewickley began carrying his work. After the
Pittsburgh Post
ran a half-page article on him, customers from as far away as Harrisburg commissioned custom-made pieces.

Two years after bringing home that old rocking chair, Joe surprised Gretchen with the gift of a new sewing machine. “Joe,” she exclaimed, running her hand over the gleaming new Singer. “What’s the occasion?”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Of course I like it, but—” Then she saw how proudly he beamed, how he could barely contain his delight, and she caught herself before asking if they could afford it. “I love it. Thank you.” He put his arms around her. “I saw it on the store shelf and it occurred to me that good things come from your quilting. You ought to have the right tools for the job.”

The sewing machine was well broken in a year later when two teenage girls knocked on the door. Gretchen did not recognize them, but she guessed they were sisters. Both wore their straight blonde hair long and parted down the middle, denim jeans that flared at the ankle, and loose peasant blouses. The elder of the two had appliquéd a black-and-white peace emblem over her heart with such large, uneven stitches that Gretchen had to hide a wince.

“What can I do for you girls?” she asked, smiling at the two youngsters on her doorstep. “Are you looking for the furniture man?”

“No, we’re looking for you,” said the older girl. “Mrs. Johnson lives next door to us and she says you know how to make patchwork quilts.”

“Why, yes, I do.” Gretchen had made a baby quilt for Trudie
Johnson’s son, now six years old or thereabouts. She was pleased Trudie remembered.

“Could you teach us?” asked the younger sister.

“Teach you how to quilt?”

The girls nodded. “Yes, please,” said the older girl.

“Does your mother know you’re here?”

They nodded again, and the younger girl added, “She says it’s all right with her as long as we aren’t a nuisance.”

“Why do you want to learn?” asked Gretchen. “Is this for Girl Scouts?”

“No,” said the elder girl. “We just want to know how.”

Gretchen hesitated, considering. Their request sounded very odd to her, two girls she had never seen before coming around the house seeking quilting lessons. The girls must have interpreted her puzzlement as reluctance, because they exchanged a worried look. The elder girl quickly blurted, “We could trade you. We could help you around the house and you could give us lessons.”

“That’s an intriguing thought.” They certainly seemed sincere in their interest. Kids these days seemed to do as they pleased, with few responsibilities and an endless supply of amusements. Anyone from their generation willing to do chores in exchange for something must truly want it.

Gretchen opened the door wider. “Very well,” she said, welcoming them inside. “You can start with the dishes.”

The Hellerman sisters came for their lessons every Saturday morning and Wednesday afternoon after school. Gretchen usually saved them a token amount of housework, but they were such a pleasure to have around that she would have taught them regardless. They were eager to learn, so cheerful and inquisitive, that Gretchen enjoyed instructing them in the making of templates, the matching of colors in calicos and solids, the small and precise motions of the running stitch. She was astonished to learn from them that traditional handicrafts fascinated all of their friends,
who were learning quilting, knitting, weaving, candle making, soap making, preserving, and a whole host of other domestic skills that had almost entirely skipped their mothers’ generation. When Holly and Megan had finished their sampler quilts, Gretchen agreed to teach a few of their friends. She was asked to teach a Saturday workshop for a group of Girl Scouts, and a few weeks later, a high school class studying the pioneers invited her as a guest speaker.

One afternoon, Gretchen ran into one of her quilting pupils at the grocery store with her mother. The mother thanked Gretchen for sharing her talents and said, “Susan makes quilting seem like so much fun. Do you think someday you might teach a class for adults?”

“I honestly hadn’t considered it,” said Gretchen. “I don’t think there would be enough interest.”

“I think you’re wrong,” the woman declared. “If you ever do start up an adult class, please let me know.”

A week later, the woman called to tell Gretchen that she had a list of six friends who would gladly pay Gretchen to teach them how to quilt. Surprised and flattered, Gretchen agreed. She reserved the public meeting room at the Ambridge library for each Wednesday evening at seven and dug out her old lesson plans from her home economics teaching days. On the first day of class, she distributed a list of supplies her students needed to purchase for the following week. They would each make a six-block sampler quilt, choosing the blocks they liked best from a collection of thirty patterns. The blocks were interchangeable, and by adding sashing and borders, the quilts would be large enough for a twin bed. In this way, each new quilter could create her own unique project without departing too much from the standard curriculum. Gretchen was thrilled to be in front of a classroom again, so when her students asked if they could bring friends along, she consented. Before long, her class doubled in size.

Some of the women owned sewing machines and had made their own clothes once upon a time; others barely knew how to thread a needle. Together they learned to choose patterns and fabric, to draft patterns and make templates, to sew a running stitch and set in pieces. They shared confidences as they quilted, as Gretchen imagined women had at quilting bees a hundred years ago and more. She was so grateful for the company of other quilters that when they finished their sampler quilt classes, she suggested they continue their weekly meetings as friends.

At one meeting of the Wednesday Night Stitchers, as they called themselves, a member hurried into the room digging into her tote. “You’ll never believe what my sister-in-law sent me from Colorado,” she announced. “A magazine about quilts!”

Everyone crowded around to see. Gretchen, who had envisioned something on the order of
Life
magazine with a photo of a brilliantly colored quilt on the cover, was somewhat let down by the few pieces of paper stapled together with the words
Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine
on the masthead. But when it was her turn to leaf through the pages, she felt a stirring of excitement and belonging that she had not felt since that long-ago home economics education course in college, with the admired instructor who was as passionate about precise piecing as she was about the storied heritage of American quilting. For so many years she had felt that her love for quilting isolated her until at last she discovered a small group of like-minded friends. Now she realized that they were not alone, that they were part of a larger community, a circle of quilters that had kept quilting alive and were passing along their skill and wisdom as generations of women had before them.

Over the years, Gretchen observed that interest in quilting was slowly and steadily growing.
Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine
began running full-color photographs and acquired some competitors. Fabric manufacturers began creating a wider variety of prints than the traditional floral calicos. Quilting guilds like the
Wednesday Night Stitchers began cropping up in cities and towns across the nation. Then, in 1976, this interest blossomed into a veritable quilt revival. The Bicentennial created a surge of renewed interest in American history, inspiring people to search for family heirlooms in their attics and closets and under their beds. Suddenly, quilts were spoken of as if they were more than just bed coverings; they were art to be displayed on walls, historical artifacts to be studied, time capsules reflecting the social, political, and aesthetic milieu of their makers—just as Sylvia Compson had asserted in the classroom so many years before.

Gretchen knew quilting was back to stay when Heidi phoned, suggesting she come in to work early the next Saturday morning so she could show Heidi how to quilt. “I thought I’d make a quilt out of flannel,” she said. “Warm and cozy, to use at the cabin. What do you think?”

Gretchen did not want to come in to work any earlier than usual, nor had she ever heard of piecing a quilt from flannel, but she did not want to discourage Heidi. “How about if I stay later, instead?”

“I can’t. I have a fund-raising luncheon at the Sewickley Academy.”

Gretchen thought for a moment, and then, with misgivings, said, “Do you want to come to my quilt club meeting on Wednesday? We all pitch in to help newcomers.”

“I was really hoping for private lessons … but I suppose that would be fine.”

“All right,” said Gretchen, already regretting her offer. She waited until Heidi found a pen before dictating the time, date, and directions.

“I’ll see you there,” said Heidi. Suddenly she laughed. “You sure were clever all those years ago when you talked me out of my great-grandmother’s quilting materials, weren’t you? If I had only known how much they were worth.”

She hung up before Gretchen could reply.

When Gretchen went to the garage to repeat Heidi’s comment to Joe, he looked up from staining a sleigh bed and shook his head. “You never should have asked her to join you and your friends.”

“I know.” But it was too late now. “I can always hope that she’ll have a miserable time and never come back.”

Joe laughed shortly. “Not Heidi. If it’s yours, she wants it, and she’ll try to take it. That’s the way she’s always been.”

“Heidi has everything,” said Gretchen, trying to make a joke of it. “She doesn’t need my little bit.”

“Who said anything about need? I said want, and Heidi has a way of getting what she wants.”

Joe turned out to be all too prescient. Heidi never mentioned her great-grandmother’s quilting again, but instead set about learning to quilt with more diligence than Gretchen had known she possessed. She charmed the other women with her enthusiasm and infectious humor, and if she referred to Gretchen once too often as her cleaning lady, no one seemed to think less of either of them for it. Besides, Gretchen
was
Heidi’s cleaning lady, and there was no sense in being too proud to acknowledge it.

Heidi absorbed everything the other women taught—everything but their rules. She mixed plaids and stripes. She shunned small-scale floral calicos. Instead of selecting a multicolored focus fabric and choosing other fabrics to match, she enthused about color wheels, complementary colors, and split-complementary color schemes, jargon she had picked up in a painting class. She combined cottons with polyesters and wools. She refused to pre-wash. And although Gretchen secretly predicted—and perhaps even hopedthat Heidi’s reckless ways would result in disastrous quilts, somehow her collisions of incongruous methods worked, earning the grudging admiration of the Stitchers’ most conservative traditionalists.

It was Heidi who suggested that the Wednesday Night Stitchers write up bylaws and officially declare themselves a quilt guild. It was Heidi who was selected as the first president. And as the other members celebrated their transformation from a group of friends to a recognized nonprofit organization, Gretchen smiled and agreed that these changes certainly were remarkable, while silently she mourned the passing of an era.

Not all of the changes Heidi inspired made her long for the old days. One of her first acts as guild president was to organize a directory of quilting guilds in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. The guilds shared information about quilt shows, guild activities, and teachers willing to travel. When Heidi defied alphabetical order and placed Gretchen’s name at the top of the teachers’ list, she received more invitations for speaking engagements than her schedule could accommodate. She felt obliged to thank Heidi, since the money she saved from her speaking fees enabled her to buy a new color television for the living room. Her gratitude evaporated when, in front of three other Wednesday Night Stitchers, Heidi replied, “It was my pleasure. I just hope the fame doesn’t go to your head or my toilets will never be clean again!”

Gretchen could have died when the other women laughed.

“You shouldn’t take that from her,” said Joe when she told him about it. “After all you’ve done for her, she still acts like a spoiled brat. She’ll never grow up, and you shouldn’t put up with it.”

“What am I supposed to do?” said Gretchen. “If I talk back, she could fire me.”

“So? Let her fire you. I’m making decent money now. You have your quilt teaching. We’ll get by.”