Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters Page 3

  A year and a half after discovering Harriet’s quilt at the garage sale, Maggie completed her quilt top. During her next lunch hour, she layered and basted it on the Ping-Pong table in the Ocean View Hills recreation room. Many of the residents gathered around to admire her work while the Courtyard Quilters threaded needles and helped her baste the top, batting, and backing together. Their enjoyment salvaged what had otherwise been an unpleasant day. At the morning staff meeting, the director informed them that their parent company had sold them off to an HMO, one with a reputation for slashing budgets and cutting staff. Maggie had an excellent record and the faith of her supervisors, but those accomplishments suddenly seemed inconsequential.

  When new management took over a few months later, Maggie kept her job, but ten of her coworkers, including her direct supervisor, were laid off. Maggie was shaken enough to consider canceling her long-anticipated vacation to Lowell, Massachusetts, to research Harriet Findley Birch’s life, but she had already purchased her airline tickets and people were expecting her. Postponing her trip might help prove her commitment to her job at a critical hour, but with Ocean View Hills in such disarray, the ideal time for a vacation might never come.

  “Go,” Mrs. Stonebridge commanded. “You’ve been wanting to do this for so long. You’ll regret it later if you cancel your plans.”

  “We won’t let them fire you while you’re gone,” promised Mrs. Blum. When the other quilters looked at her in exasperation, she quickly added, “Not that you’re in any danger. That’s just silly.”

  It didn’t seem silly to Maggie, but finally she realized she could not cancel a trip that had been so many months in the planning. In Massachusetts, she spent a week admiring the fall foliage, exploring the local quilt shops, and sharing Harriet’s quilt with the curator of the New England Quilt Museum. The curator in turn introduced Maggie to local historians and a professor who had extensively researched the history of the cotton mills. He was able to identify more than twenty of the cotton prints in Harriet’s quilt as fabrics made in the early nineteenth century by the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, and he promised to see what else he could find in his university’s extensive historical archives.

  The visit was over far too soon, but Maggie returned home determined to complete her own quilt. The Courtyard Quilters had identified many of the traditional patterns for her, but there were many others none of them had ever seen, nor could find in any quilt pattern reference book. Maggie invented names of her own, inspired by Harriet’s imagined life—Oregon Trail, Rocky Road to Salem, Mill Girls, Lowell Crossroads, Franklin’s Choice.

  On the same day Maggie finished sewing the binding on her quilt, the staff of Ocean View Hills were offered the opportunity to accept a ten percent pay cut or a pink slip. With great misgivings, Maggie chose the pay cut. She loved her job but wondered how much longer she would be able to keep it.

  She forgot her worries for a time on Saturday, when she displayed her completed quilt at the Goose Tracks Quilt Shop. Her new friends were there, as well as many other quilters who had heard through the grapevine that she might bring the finished quilt that day. They admired and praised her work, and took photos—not only of the quilt, but of Maggie posed beside the quilt, and of themselves with Maggie in front of the quilt. Several encouraged her to enter it in a quilt show, but Maggie thought of how far her quilting skills had come since she began the quilt and shuddered to think what a judge might say about her first blocks.

  After the group broke up, Lois, the quilt shop owner, came over for a closer look. “It’s lovely,” she said. “What are you going to call it?”

  “My Journey with Harriet,” said Maggie. “Do you think that’s all right?”

  “I think it’s perfect, but it doesn’t matter what I think. It’s your quilt.” Lois bent forward to study one of the blocks more closely. “I was wondering if you would be interested in teaching a class here in the shop. So many of my customers have admired your quilt. I’m sure they’d want you to show them how you did it.”

  “I’ve never taught quilting,” said Maggie. “I’m not even a very experienced quilter. I’m just a motivated beginner.”

  Lois shrugged. “I don’t care if you just started quilting last week. If you can make a quilt like this, you have something to share. I’ll pay you, of course.”

  Maggie thought of her recent pay cut, summoned up her courage, and agreed.

  Almost immediately, she wished she had not. What if no one signed up for the class? What if the students mocked her graph paper sketches and cardstock templates? But she needed the extra money, and she understood completely the desire other quilters might have to re-create Harriet’s quilt for themselves. If they wanted her help, she couldn’t ignore them.

  In the month leading up to her first class, Maggie redrafted some of the blocks and designed templates. She wrote lesson plans and made new versions of the first five blocks she planned to teach, this time using popular jewel tones that she thought would appeal more to her students. If she had any. Lois said that the classroom held a maximum of twenty students, but a typical class at the shop enrolled half that number. Maggie fervently hoped for at least five. She would not break even, but at least the classroom would not be completely empty.

  On the evening of her first class, Maggie drove to the Goose Tracks Quilt Shop and found the parking lot full. Lois met her at the door, shaking her head. “I warned people to sign up early, but no one ever believes me. The waiting list is already twelve deep, so if someone doesn’t show up, let me know right away, okay?”

  Struck speechless, Maggie nodded and made her way through the store with her box of quilts, blocks, and handouts. Twenty students awaited her in the classroom. They murmured with expectation as she went to the front and unpacked her box of supplies. She started class by displaying Harriet Findley Birch’s quilt and was stunned when the students burst into applause. As she explained the general structure of the course and took in their eager nods, a glow of warmth began to melt away her fears. She was not alone in her admiration for Harriet Findley Birch’s magnificent creation. Just like the Courtyard Quilters, the women gathered here felt the same way.

  With each week, she felt more assured and confident in front of the classroom. Each week she demonstrated several blocks, which her students began in class and completed at home. When the course ended, her students begged Lois to create an advanced class especially for them, so Maggie agreed to teach them some of Harriet’s more difficult patterns while repeating her first course for beginners. After those courses concluded, she added Harriet’s Journey III to her schedule. The local quilt guild invited her to speak about the quilt, and she did so, not realizing until they handed her a check afterward that they had intended to pay her. The guild must have enjoyed her presentation, because they recommended her to another guild, who recommend her to another, until it seemed that every quilt guild within two hundred miles of Sacramento had sent her an eager invitation.

  Not long after her first class of students began bringing their own completed Harriet’s Journey quilts to show-and-tell for her newest students, Maggie received a letter from the history professor she had met during her visit to Lowell two years before. His search to find a record of Harriet Findley Birch’s employment at the Merrimack Manufacturing Company had failed, but he had discovered convincing evidence in the Lowell Offering, a literary journal for the mill workers. In 1849, a mill girl had contributed a story about a young woman torn between the independence she enjoyed as a mill worker and her love for a handsome suitor. The professor had enclosed a copy.

  The story told of a young woman, probably a thinly disguised version of the author, who lamented, “Though earning her own living was reckoned as a suitable accomplishment for a young maid, few would consider it appropriate for a wife to spend her hours thus employed. Indeed, Hannah’s own dear William had often declared that no bride of his should weave or spin in the mills when she could be better occupied cooking his breakfast. And yet
Hannah loved him, and would cleave to his side, though he would summon her from the friends and life that had become so dear and bid her go with him to distant lands far from home and family.”

  The author was Harriet Findley.

  At last, Maggie filled in the missing pieces of Harriet’s story. She had worked as a mill girl until marrying Franklin. When her husband decided to move west, Harriet, the obedient wife, had agreed, though her heart broke to part from her dear friends, many of whom still worked at the mills. Knowing she would no longer be able to trade patterns with her acquaintances, she stitched her masterwork as a record of all the blocks they knew, so that no matter how far west she traveled, she would have a wonderful variety of patterns to choose from when making quilts for her growing family. Scraps she had saved from her own days in the mill intermingled with pieces shared by beloved friends and relatives. She could not have sewn on the seat of a jolting wagon as they crossed the country on the Oregon Trail, so she had likely pieced the blocks in Lowell and quilted the top in Salem. Into the quilt she had stitched her grief, her hopes, her faithfulness, and her memories.

  That was the story Maggie told in her classes and lectures, admitting that it was only one possible version of Harriet’s life. Her students did not seem to mind the ambiguity, but they often spoke of finding Harriet’s home in Lowell and of seeking out the indisputable truth. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, they sighed, if they could find an old, sepia-toned photograph of Harriet? A diary in which she had confided her reasons for making the quilt? Letters she had written home to Lowell from the Oregon Trail?

  Maggie, too, longed to know the truth, but she was grateful for every cherished scrap of information she had collected over the years and would not demand more.

  When Maggie had saved enough money, she bought a new car, choosing a sensible model with a large trunk and excellent gas mileage because of her expanding schedule of speaking engagements. Her first road trip took her north to Salem, Oregon, to Harriet’s final resting place. She planted flowers by the headstone, and on the soft green grass nearby, she spread out Harriet’s quilt and the four duplicates she had made. She spoke at a nearby quilt guild that evening, spent the night in a bed-and-breakfast run by the guild treasurer, and drove home in the morning after meeting Jason Birch for breakfast. She wished she could have stayed longer, but Ocean View Hills had cut her vacation from two weeks a year to three days, a reduction that would have been considered unfair and damaging to employee morale when she had first begun working there.

  Maggie taught nearly every evening at the quilt shop and twice on Saturdays. She was more grateful than ever for the extra income after a second round of budget cuts trimmed the staff at Ocean View Hills by another four employees and a promised cost of living increase fell through. One evening, Maggie tentatively approached Lois about increasing the fee for her classes to cover printing expenses. “We could do that,” said Lois, “but surely you don’t plan to give away your patterns forever.”

  The day her pattern book, My Journey with Harriet: The 1854 Harriet Findley Birch Quilt, was published, Lois threw a party in Maggie’s honor at the quilt shop. Her sister, brother-in-law, and two nieces flew in from Phoenix, and the curator of the New England Quilt Museum sent her flowers. The most able of the Courtyard Quilters attended, and Maggie was finally able to reveal the secret she had been keeping since the day she had begun her manuscript: The dedication of her book read, “To the Courtyard Quilters, who welcomed me into their circle, offered me their guidance, and shared my journey with Harriet from the very first step.”

  Lois had sold out of copies that night, and the book’s brisk sales at Goose Tracks were mirrored in quilt shops across the country. Second and third printings swiftly followed. Maggie taught workshops at quilt guild meetings and lectured at national quilt shows. She moved across town to a larger house with a spacious formal dining room she converted to a quilt studio. Childhood friends with whom she had fallen out of touch contacted her after reading articles about her in their local newspapers. A former teacher phoned after spotting My Journey with Harriet featured in a book club supplement of his Sunday newspaper.

  But her success was tempered with sorrow. Her beloved circle of quilters, whose numbers and composition had always fluctuated over time according to what Mrs. Stonebridge euphemistically called “natural attrition,” began to lose members faster than they could welcome newcomers as concerned family members responded to staffing cuts by transferring their mothers and grandmothers to other facilities. Mrs. Stonebridge’s son wanted to move her closer to his home, but she told him she would never leave Ocean View Hills as long as at least one friend remained. Maggie wanted to believe that would be a very long time, but each day her hopes diminished.

  When My Journey with Harriet went into its twelfth printing seven years later, Harriet wanted to create a revised and updated edition, but all her editor wanted to know was when she intended to write something new. “When I find another quilt like Harriet’s,” replied Maggie, hoping that would end the discussion.

  “How hard have you looked?”

  “Not very,” Maggie admitted, but she promised to try harder if her editor would agree to consider a new edition. It was an unsatisfactory compromise, so Maggie hung up with the excuse that she had to get to her day job.

  She arrived at Ocean View Hills to find the staff fairly roiling with uneasiness. Rumors had circulated for weeks that their HMO was going to consolidate with another health care corporation, and no one in management knew what that would mean for their jobs and their residents. Though Maggie could not help feeling as unsettled as the rest of her colleagues, she reassured herself that her thirteen years of exemplary employment had to count for something.

  The blow came at an emergency meeting of all senior management. Ocean View Hills was not going to merge with anyone. The other health care corporation was going to buy them out and shut them down.

  Maggie did not understand the reasoning behind their decision. The director, visibly shaken by his own pending unemployment, provided a lengthy explanation about profitability and tax liabilities, but Maggie was too upset to follow the corporate finance intricacies. She struggled to absorb the truth that in six months, her beloved residents would be scattered around northern California wherever their families could find appropriate care for them, and she would be out of a job.

  “At least you have your quilt book and your teaching,” a coworker grumbled to Maggie in the lounge where the senior staff had gathered to collect their wits before returning to work. They had been sworn to secrecy until a letter could be drafted to the other employees and the residents’ families, although Maggie doubted any of them could keep silent for long. The other employees knew about the meeting, and as far as Maggie was concerned, it would be cruel to mislead them.

  “I can’t live off that income,” said Maggie. Worse, she had received only vague assurances from the director that their pensions would be protected. She also had a modest 401(K), but although she was only thirty-eight, she had hoped to take early retirement in ten years and devote herself to quilting and writing full time. That dream, she knew, was over.

  In a move that received criticism from some of the residents, the director informed their families first and allowed the family members to tell their parents and grandparents as they deemed best. Some of the Courtyard Quilters felt that Maggie had betrayed them by not telling them about the closure as soon as she knew. “I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t,” Maggie said. “The director forbade it.”

  “What do you care what he says?” glowered one of the quilters. “What’s he going to do, fire you?”

  “Don’t blame Maggie,” said Mrs. Stonebridge, kindly but in a manner that demanded cooperation. “She has professional responsibilities that take priority over ties of friendship. What if one of the patients from C Wing overheard us talking before their children had an opportunity to prepare them? Consider how that might upset the poor dears.”

  C W
ing was where the patients with dementia and other serious chronic medical conditions resided. Thinking of them, the quilters relented. Some even murmured apologies, which Maggie accepted although she did not think she deserved them. She had wanted to warn them of what was coming, but she could not afford to give the director any reason to fire her.

  “I can’t bear to think our circle of quilters will be split up,” lamented Mrs. Blum.

  “We can try to stay together,” said another. “Maybe our children could find a place with room for all of us.”

  One quilter shook her head. “Not me. My daughter has already decided that I’m moving in with them. The girls will share a bedroom and I’ll get the extra.” She paused. “It will be wonderful to see more of the kids, but I’ll miss my girlfriends.”

  “We will have to keep in touch as best we can,” said Mrs. Stonebridge. “With any luck, two or three of us will end up in the same place.”

  The Courtyard Quilters nodded, believing their longtime leader by force of habit, or, Maggie thought, as an act of faith.

  That evening at the quilt shop, she taught her class so woodenly that Lois thought she was ill and offered to take over. Maggie briefly told her what the real problem was and forced herself to shake off her worries and get through the evening. She could not afford to lose this job, too.

  As she packed up her teaching materials, Lois entered the classroom with a magazine in her hand. “I’m tempted not to show you this,” she said, opening the magazine as she passed it to Maggie. “I would hate to lose you.”

  Maggie read the ad Lois had circled in red pen. “A quilt camp,” she said. “That sounds like heaven. But it’s all the way across the country.”