Julia had never heard that tip before. She decided to try it as she worked on her Nine-Patch, as an experiment. She didn’t hand piece often, but she always enjoyed adding new skills to her repertoire.
“Has everyone made a good, secure backstitch?” Maggie asked, looking around the room, smiling at the mix of tentative nods and loud affirmatives. “Let’s make two more running stitches along the drawn sewing line. Keep your stitches small, neat, and even in size.”
Julia complied, except that she made four stitches rather than two. Setting her work on the table and folding her hands, she turned to Edna smugly—only to find that Edna was still sewing. “Follow instructions,” Julia admonished in a whisper.
“Instructions are for the timid, and fortune favors the bold,” Edna replied, but she set down her work and waited for everyone else to catch up.
“Go ahead and finish your seam,” Maggie said as she strolled the aisles, inspecting their work. “Carefully remove the pins as you come to them. When you reach the end point of your sewing line, stop, make a backstitch, and tie a secure knot. Take care not to sewinto the seam allowance. For some blocks, that makes no difference, but for others it’s essential, so let’s practice sewing point to point only.”
After everyone completed their seam and tied a knot, Maggie instructed them to trim the extra thread, fold the seam allowances toward the darker fabric, and crease the seam flat with a fingernail. Next, they each sewed another focus fabric square to the opposite side of the muslin. “Congrats,” Maggie praised them when everyone had finished. “You’ve made the top row of your Nine-Patch block.”
“Huzzah!” Nigel boomed, brandishing his row overhead, evoking laughs and cheers from his friends.
“Now let’s repeat all of those steps to make the bottom row,” said Maggie, through her own laughter. “When you’ve finished that, sew two muslin squares to opposite sides of your last focus fabric square to make the center row.”
For the rest of the morning, the Patchwork Players worked on their blocks, chatting and teasing, seeking help from their teachers, picking out stitches that didn’t fall on the line or were much too big. Edna completed her three rows swiftly—no surprise there—with enviably small, perfectly even stitches. Julia was the next to finish. When Gretchen saw them chatting and realized they were ready for the next step, she directed them to the ironing table to press their rows. “Lift and press with a hot iron,” Gretchen said, demonstrating for the class with Julia’s top row. “Avoid sliding the iron around, because you might distort the fabric.”
When Julia and Edna were finished at the ironing table, they returned their neatly pressed rows to their worktable and joined the Elm Creek Quilters in wandering the aisles, offering help or advice to anyone who needed either. As more of the company finished and proudly or gleefully made their way to the pressing table, Maggie announced that she would teach them the next step after lunch. “Take all the time you need to finish your rows,” she told the others reassuringly. “Gretchen and I will be here to help, or just to cheer you on.If you’ve finished, you’re welcome to spend the rest of the morning as you wish—touring the manor, exploring the grounds, reading in the library, helping Anna in the kitchen, babysitting Sarah’s toddler twins—” She broke off, interrupted by the company’s groans and laughter. “What?” she asked, feigning bewilderment. “I thought Julia said this was aworkingvacation.”
“There’s work,” said Olivia, indicating her nearly completed center row, “and there’swork.” Grimacing, she tilted her head in the approximate direction of the kitchen.
Tempted by Maggie’s offer of time on their own to explore or relax, some of the company who had completed their rows wandered off, and more followed after they too finished, but Julia remained, taking the empty chair at Nigel’s table and coaxing him through his last few seams. “My fingers are too big for this tiny needle,” he grumbled, but not unhappily.
“A bad workman blames his tools,” she teased. “The needle is the standard size for hand piecing, and there’s nothing wrong with your fingers that practice won’t cure.”
Thanks to such encouragement, or perhaps in spite of it, Nigel completed the last seam, tied off the thread, and pressed the three respectable rows, and he wasn’t even the last to finish. That honor went to Dylan, who waved them on their way when they offered to stay and keep him company. “You actors might not understand this,” he said, “but some folks prefer to work without an audience.”
“I can’t imagine,” Julia said, incredulous, but she smiled at Dylan over her shoulder in parting.
As they left the ballroom, Julia took Nigel’s arm. “Where to? The verandah, to admire the view? The kitchen, to spoil the broth with too many cooks?”
“The library,” he replied firmly, gesturing toward the grand oak staircase. “I believe that’s where Ellen prefers to write. I hope to trick her into revealing what lies ahead for Ben Atherton in season six.”
“If tricking her doesn’t work, you could try asking.”
“No,” he mused aloud as they climbed the stairs. “She’s too clever to fall for that.”
At the top of the stairs, they turned down the hallway, passing two guest suites on the right and the balcony open to the foyer below on their left. Just past the staircase to the third floor, the hall ended at a pair of French doors, which Julia was surprised to see had been left open as if to beckon readers inside. The library was also the business office for Elm Creek Quilts, so it was not available to guests during the summer camp season. In all the years she had attended camp, Julia had been invited into the library only once before, for a private conversation with Sylvia. Even now, knowing the Patchwork Players had been given browsing privileges, when Nigel strode briskly inside, Julia hung back a moment before following cautiously after him, ready to turn back if they interrupted Sylvia and Sarah in the midst of a confidential discussion.
Just like the ballroom directly below, the manor’s stately library spanned the entire width of the manor’s south wing. Light spilled in through tall diamond-paned windows on the east and west walls, and between the windows stood tall bookcases, shelves bowing slightly under the weight of hundreds of volumes. A fire burning in the large stone fireplace on the south wall made the library warm and snug, but Julia remembered from her previous visit that in summer, gentle cross breezes kept the room comfortably cool on even the sunniest days. On the wall beside the fireplace hung a most unusual Winding Ways quilt comprised of nine panels, nine blocks each, hung side by side so closely that they appeared to be a single, unified whole—or they would have, except that the sections in the two lower corners were absent, with only slender, brushed-nickel rods and brackets to indicate where they belonged. The pieced mosaic of overlapping circles and intertwining curves, the careful balance of dark and light hues, and the unexpected harmony of the disparate fabrics and colors evoked the sense of many winding paths meeting, intersecting, parting, creating the illusion that the separate sections formed a single quilt.
Julia recalled what Sylvia had told her when she had admired the striking artwork: that Sylvia had made the quilt as a gift for the original Elm Creek Quilters, the fabrics and colors of each panel selected especially for its designee. As there were eight founding members and nine panels, Sylvia had dedicated the one in the center to all the Elm Creek Quilters who might join the faculty in the future. “The Winding Ways quilt reflects partings and reunions,” Sylvia had explained. “When one of our circle must leave us, she takes her section of the quilt with her as a memento of the loving friends awaiting her return. The empty places on the wall remind those of us left behind that the beauty of our friendship endures, even if great distances separate us. When the absent friend returns to Elm Creek Manor, she returns her panel to its proper place, and the loveliness of the whole is restored.”
“What a marvelous tribute to your friendship,” Julia had exclaimed at the time. Thanks to the Cross-Country Quilters, she too had been blessed with friends whose affection and loyalty endured regardless of the distances that separated them or the many months that passed between reunions.
Julia’s gaze lingered on the quilt a moment longer, but Nigel was scanning the room for Ellen. Two armchairs and footstools sat invitingly before the fireplace, and more chairs and sofas were arranged in a square in the center of the room, but only Jason sat there, furrowing his brow and biting his lower lip as he typed on his laptop. Nor was Ellen seated in the tall leather chair behind the large oak desk that had once belonged to Sylvia’s father. That place had been claimed by none other than Sarah McClure herself, her long, reddish-brown hair tucked behind her ears as she glanced between the spreadsheet on her computer and the stack of paperwork on the desktop, entering data with her right hand and holding her toddler daughter firmly on her lap with the other. Caroline was deeply engrossed in a board book, but she looked up to study the newcomers, keenly interested.
“Alas,” Nigel grumbled. “My quarry eludes me.”
“Hello and welcome,” Sarah greeted them, smiling. “Looking for a good read?”
“Yes,” said Nigel, peering around the library as if Ellen might suddenly emerge from behind an armchair. “But it isn’t here.”
When Sarah’s eyebrows rose, Julia quickly clarified, “He’s searching for Ellen. He hopes to steal a look at what she’s written for his character in season six.”
“Don’t tell her that,” Nigel protested. “She might warn Ellen, and I won’t get so much as a glimpse of the title page.”
Julia rolled her eyes. “Sarah won’t tell anyone.”
