An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (85 page)

Julia overslept.

She had forgotten to set the alarm clock and, still jet-lagged, did not wake until someone knocked on her door. “Miss Merchaud?” a woman called. “Breakfast.”

Julia scrambled out of bed and snatched up her robe. “Just a minute.” Hastily she finger-combed her hair as she went to the door. She hoped the woman in the hallway didn’t have a camera. The National Inquirer would pay big for a shot of her with mussed hair and no makeup. Holding her robe closed at the neck, she opened the door a crack, only wide enough to see a brown-haired young woman holding a covered tray, looking back at her inquisitively.

Julia had the younger woman place the tray on the desk and ushered her out again as quickly as possible. She wasn’t hungry, but she nibbled on an English muffin and ate most of the fruit, leaving the omelet untouched. The coffee was suitably strong, though she missed her cinnamon cappuccino. Oh, well. As Ares had said, she was there to work. She could endure a week of roughing it.

She showered quickly but dressed and applied her makeup with care. In the hallway, the muffled sounds of other campers making their way downstairs had faded, and a glance at the clock told her she would have to hurry. She grabbed a pen and the notes she had compiled the previous night but, with an effort, forced herself to leave her sunglasses on the dresser.

Her registration papers included a map of the manor, and she followed the directions downstairs to the ballroom, which had been partitioned into classrooms with folding screens decorated in patchwork. The last of eleven women to arrive, she found Quick Piecing with barely a moment to spare. The instructor—the same young woman who had brought Julia her breakfast—had already begun her introduction as Julia slipped into a seat at the back of the room, grateful that she had a table to herself. She would have been mortified if the teacher had made another camper change places to accommodate Ares’s demands.

The teacher, Sarah, passed out the first lesson, instructions on quickpiecing quarter-square triangles. “First, you’ll need to pick a light fabric and a medium or dark,” Sarah said. “Cut a six inch by twelve inch rectangle from each fabric using your rotary cutter, and then lay the two fabrics with right sides facing, the light piece on top.”

As Sarah spoke, Julia watched with alarm as the other ten students reached into their bags and brought out folded bundles of fabric, plastic rulers, and odd-shaped tools that resembled pizza cutters. Was she supposed to have brought her own fabric? She glanced around her tabletop—a sewing machine, a gridded plastic mat, no fabric—and her face grew hot. Obviously she should have brought fabric from home; everyone else was prepared. She looked to the front of the classroom in dismay, but Sarah was already walking around the room observing her students as they layered fabric on their mats and happily sliced away at it with the pizza cutters.

“Is everyone ready to go on?” Sarah called out. Julia’s meek “No” was lost in the chorus of affirmatives. “Okay, then, next I want you to take your pencil and, using your ruler, draw a grid of two-inch squares on the back of your light fabric.”

A ruler. Julia snatched up her notebook and quickly tore out a sheet of paper. The pages were eight and one half inches by eleven; she could fold it into sections and estimate an inch. Then she remembered the gridded plastic mat and scooted her chair closer to it. To her relief, she saw that the grid was marked in one-eighth-inch increments along two edges. Folding her paper to strengthen it, she lined it up against the edge of the mat and began marking off inches. By the time her makeshift ruler was completed, the rest of the class had already proceeded to the next step. Racing to catch up, Julia tore two more sheets of paper from her notebook and wrote “Dark” on one and “Light” on the other. She drew a wobbly-edged grid as the other students moved on to their sewing machines. She was too far behind to ever catch up, but she persevered grimly. Ares had sent her to this godforsaken place with none of the proper materials, but she needed that role and she was going to learn something while she was there.

Suddenly a shadow fell over her table. “Is everything okay back here?”

Julia looked up to find Sarah standing on the other side of her table. “I … Yes, everything’s fine,” Julia said. “Please continue.”

Sarah looked dubious. “Did you leave your things in your room? You have time to run upstairs and get them.”

“No, thank you.” The other students had paused in their work to watch. “Please, I don’t want to hold up the rest of the class.”

“Wasn’t there a supply list in the course confirmation packet mailed to your home?”

A supply list. Of course, there must have been a supply list, and it must have been sent to the agency. “There probably was,” Julia said, picturing her hands closing around Ares’s throat, “but I didn’t get it.”

“I see,” Sarah said, with a puzzled frown that said she didn’t see at all.

“I have some extra fabric,” said an older woman with a cloud of shockingly bright white hair. “What do you like? Red or blue?”

“Oh, no, that’s quite all right,” Julia demurred.

The woman was already making her way from the front of the room, a bundle of fabric in her arms. “Nonsense; I always bring plenty.” She placed the bundle on Julia’s table and held up a piece of kelly green fabric with wide red lines zigzagging across it. “Here’s a nice one. Or do you prefer calico?”

“Calico,” Julia said quickly, recognizing one of the unfamiliar terms from Ellen’s script. The older woman smiled indulgently and handed her a piece of dark blue fabric sprinkled with tiny white flowers.

“Here’s something you can use for the light fabric,” another woman called out, waving a cream-colored piece over her head like a banner. Sarah supplied her with one of the pizza-cutter tools, and soon everyone had joined in, showering Julia with extra rulers and pins and needles and so much extra fabric she wasn’t sure how she’d carry it back upstairs to her room. She felt her face flaming with embarrassment as she accepted their gifts and stammered out her thanks.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get the list. There must have been some oversight,” Sarah said. “After class, why don’t you show me your course list and I’ll send into town for the rest of the supplies you’ll need.”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.” Julia wished everyone would stop looking at her. Suddenly she couldn’t bear for the instructor to think that an experienced quilter would be so ignorant. She lowered her voice. “I’m sorry for the disruption, but I never quilted before.”

The white-haired woman overheard, and her eyebrows shot up. “This is your first quilting class? Ever? My goodness, you’re ambitious, skipping the basics and going straight to this high-tech stuff.”

“Skipping …” Julia’s voice trailed off, and she looked from the white-haired woman to Sarah. “This isn’t a beginner’s course?”

“Most new quilters start out in Beginning Piecing,” Sarah said. “You’ve really never quilted before?”

Julia shook her head, thinking
Isn’t it obvious?

“Then …” Sarah hesitated. “I don’t mean to question your judgment, but why did you sign up for Quick Piecing?”

Julia had never even seen a course description. Ares had signed her up for this course, and suddenly Julia understood why. “Because I need to learn quickly.”

The white-haired woman laughed as if Julia had made a joke, but Sarah only smiled kindly. “I think tomorrow morning we should switch you to Diane’s Beginning Piecing class, okay?”

“That would be lovely, thank you.” Julia wished she could disappear.

On their way to their first activity, Megan confided that she had some misgivings about signing up for the color theory course, but she felt reassured when Donna confessed her own doubts. Their reasons differed, though; Megan feared the class would be dull, while Donna worried that it would be too technical to understand. To their delight, their apprehensions vanished within a few minutes, mostly because their eccentric teacher made the material lively and interesting. Gwen was a stout, red-haired woman who wore a bright blue beaded necklace and a long flowing skirt in a wild print, and her enthusiasm for the subject matter was infectious. “How dare she say such a thing,” she had cried when a student timidly mentioned that her elementary school art teacher had insisted that red and purple didn’t go together. “Who is she, the color police? Let her make quilts in matchy-matchy colors if she wants, but don’t let her prevent you from being more adventurous!”

Her good-humored indignation sent the class into peals of laughter, which turned into murmurs of surprise and delight as Gwen passed out boxes of crayons and sheets of paper. She instructed them in a coloring exercise meant to free their inhibitions and expand their “color sense.” Megan colored happily, feeling like a carefree first-grader as she and Donna talked and compared their work.

“As long as we’re expanding our color sense, maybe you’ll finally give purple a try,” Donna said, waving a violet crayon before Megan’s eyes.

Megan feigned a horrified shudder. “Get that thing away from me.”

“You like blue and you like red. How can you not like purple?”

“It’s simply a matter of personal preference. What do you care what colors I use or don’t use?”

“I hate to see you limiting yourself.”

Megan laughed. “This, from the woman who refuses to use white as a background fabric.”

“That’s just a habit, not a phobia. And I have good reason. Off-white and cream don’t show the dirt as well.” Donna gave her a determined look. “I’m going to get you to use purple in a quilt if it’s the last thing I do.”

Later, after Megan had completed her exercise and was looking around to see what the other quilters had done, she spotted Grace Daniels at a table on the other side of the room. She nudged Donna. “Look. There she is.”

Donna’s head jerked up, but then she frowned, disappointed. “I thought you meant Julia Merchaud.”

“Grace Daniels isn’t a big enough celebrity for you?” Megan teased. “Anyway, I don’t think Julia Merchaud is really here. Her room is supposedly across the hall from mine, but I haven’t seen her.”

“Some people say they have.”

“Yes, but some people say they’ve seen extraterrestrials and the Loch Ness Monster. Maybe these Julia Merchaud sightings are like that.”

“Sure, Julia Merchaud is the Loch Ness Quilter.”

Megan laughed, but her mirth faded as she watched Grace carefully select another crayon, her brow furrowed in concentration. “She seems sad.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Everyone else is having fun, but she looks like she’s taking the SATs.”

“I saw her this morning, in the garden,” Donna said. “I thought she wanted to be left alone. Maybe she’s worried about her creativity, like she said at the Candlelight.”

“She’s not talking to anyone.”

“Maybe she’s shy.”

Megan doubted that a famous quilt artist could feel shy among a crowd of admiring quilters, but before she could say so, Gwen announced that class was over. “Let’s ask Grace to join us for lunch,” Megan suggested as they gathered their things. Donna agreed, but when they looked over at the other side of the room, Grace had already left.

They looked for her outside, where the staff had arranged a picnic buffet on the veranda, but Grace wasn’t at any of the tables or standing in line for food. “Tomorrow we’ll sit near her in class,” Donna said as they joined the queue. “The worst she can do is ignore us, right?”

“She won’t. Who would be crazy enough to deny themselves the pleasure of our illustrious company?”

“Julia Merchaud, for one.”

They laughed.

“What are you two girls giggling about?” someone behind them in line asked. Megan turned to find a white-haired woman eyeing them with mock suspicion. She wore red tennis shoes and a T-shirt that read “Quiltoholics Anonymous.”

Donna laughed and introduced Megan to the woman, Vinnie from Dayton, Ohio. Megan had remembered her from the Candlelight, and was pleased that Vinnie remembered her.

“Oh, yes, you’re the one who won the contest.” Vinnie nodded toward the buffet and sighed happily. “Isn’t this marvelous? I love a buffet. You can take whatever you want and leave the crap behind.”