Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters (3 page)

“Why would anyone think information about a Harry Birch would be useful?” Maggie asked the Courtyard Quilters one day when she found time to run down to the recreation room to update them on her progress—or lack thereof. “This is impossible. I should have known I wouldn’t turn up anything.”

“You can’t give up now,” protested Mrs. Blum. “Not after piquing our curiosity. Our old hearts can’t take it.”

“Don’t play the ‘We’re so fragile, have pity on us’ card on me,” Maggie teased. “I saw you doing the polka in the library with Mr. Maniceaux not two weeks ago.”

“Oh.” A faint pink flush rose in Mrs. Blum’s cheeks. “You saw that, did you?”

“Don’t abandon your project so soon,” urged Mrs. Stonebridge. “Someone on that list might be a descendant of Harriet Findley Birch. You’ll never know if you don’t call.”

Maggie feared that it would be a waste of time, but she promised the Courtyard Quilters she would consider it.

A week later, curiosity and a sense of obligation to the Courtyard Quilters as well as the museum curator compelled her to resume her calls. Two-thirds of the way through the names and numbers she had collected, she reached a man who said that his great-grandmother’s name was Harriet Findley Birch. “When I was a kid,” he said, “my grandmother took me to see Harriet Findley Birch’s grave, not far from our original family homestead in Salem. It’s a tradition in our family, a pilgrimage we make when we’re old enough to appreciate her.”

Thrilled, Maggie told the man about the quilt she had found and asked him to send whatever information she could about his great-grandmother. He agreed, but the information Maggie received in the mail a week later was disappointingly scanty. Harriet Findley was born in 1830 or 1831 in rural Massachusetts. She married Franklin Birch in 1850 and traveled west along the Oregon Trail sometime after that. She had six children, only two of whom survived to adulthood.

The next week Maggie returned to the museum. The quilt had been so beautifully restored she almost did not recognize it. Her information about the quilt’s provenance seemed hopelessly inadequate compensation for Grace Daniels’s work, but the curator
brushed off Maggie’s apologies. She had made a few discoveries of her own after contacting a colleague at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.

The Lowell curator had not heard of the Harriet Findley Birch quilt, but she had posed an interesting theory. The more than one hundred unique fabrics in the quilt suggested that Harriet had ready access to a wide variety of cottons. Though she could have saved scraps for years or traded with friends, it was also possible that she had worked in one of Lowell’s cotton mills before her marriage. A mill girl could have collected scraps off the floor that otherwise would have been swept up and discarded, and before long acquired more than enough for a quilt. Grace’s colleague was not convinced that Harriet had been a mill girl, however, because existing diaries of mill girls from Harriet’s era rarely mentioned quilting as a pleasurable pastime. Instead these young women new to the excitement of the city spent their precious off hours enjoying lectures, exhibitions, and other cultural events outside of the boardinghouses where they lived.

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for certain,” said Grace.

Maggie reluctantly agreed they were unlikely to learn more.

She took the precious quilt home and draped it over her bed. She sat in a chair nearby and gazed at it lovingly, but with an ache of regret. The more she learned how rare and precious the quilt was, the more she realized she had no right to keep it.

But the extra print the museum’s photographer had made for her was not enough.

She bought colored pencils, graph paper, and a ruler and began drafting the beloved little blocks, imagining Harriet Findley Birch sketching the originals so long ago. Had she worked on her quilt on the front porch of her boardinghouse, enjoying the fresh air after a fourteen-hour shift in the stifling mill? Had she sewn in her parents’ front parlor, envying the confident, independent mill girls who passed by her window on their way to work?

One Saturday morning after she had drawn ten blocks, Maggie visited a quilt store the Courtyard Quilters had recommended, the Goose Tracks Quilt Shop, to purchase fabric and sewing tools. She felt too shy to ask any of the busy customers or saleswomen for help, so she wandered through the aisles scanning the bolts for fabrics that looked like Harriet’s. She chose ten, carried them awkwardly to the cutting table, and asked the shop owner to cut her enough of each one to make a six-inch quilt block.

“Okay,” the woman said carefully, clearly recognizing her as a novice but not wishing to discourage her. “Do you think a quarter of a yard will do? An eighth?”

Maggie had no idea, but just in case, she asked for quarter-yard cuts.

“We have fat quarters over there if you’re interested,” the woman said, gesturing with her scissors toward stacked rows of baskets full of rolled bundles of fabric. “What are you making?”

“A sampler.”

“Bring some of your finished blocks along next time. I’d love to see them.”

Flattered, Maggie agreed, but her quilting skills were so rusty she wasn’t sure she wanted to show her handiwork to anyone. Fortunately, when she told the Courtyard Quilters about her project, they eagerly offered her a refresher course in the art of quilting by hand. With their assistance, she relearned how to make a precise running stitch, how to appliqué, how to sew perfectly smooth curves, and how to set pieces into an angle. Breaks and lunch hours she usually passed on her own she now spent in the company of the Courtyard Quilters. By the time she finished making her eighth block, she had earned a chair of her own among the circle of quilters.

A few weeks after her first visit to the Goose Tracks Quilt Shop, when Maggie had completed ten blocks and had sketched the second row of ten, she returned for more fabric. This time she knew
exactly what she needed and chose from the baskets of fat quarters with confidence. The shop owner recognized her and asked how her sampler was progressing. Maggie placed the ten little blocks on the counter, her pride in her work abruptly vanishing as other customers gathered around to look. “I’m just a beginner,” she apologized, fighting the urge to sweep the blocks back into her purse. To her surprise, the other quilters admired her work and insisted they never would have guessed she was a beginner.

“What do you call this pattern?” asked one of the women, indicating a five-pointed star.

“I don’t know,” said Maggie. “I’m copying blocks I found in an antique quilt.”

With prompting from the quilters, the whole story of Harriet Findley Birch’s quilt came out. The women marveled at Maggie’s lucky find and begged to be allowed to see Harriet’s quilt for themselves, so Maggie agreed to meet them at the shop the following Saturday.

In the interim, she completed five more blocks and sketched a dozen more in anticipation of her return to the quilt shop. The women she had spoken to the previous week must have told their friends, because more than twice the number of people she had expected were there, eager to admire Harriet Findley Birch’s masterpiece. After seeing the original version, several of the quilters told Maggie that they respected her courage for taking on such a daunting project, which would surely take years to complete. Until that moment, Maggie had not thought of how much time she would need to invest in her replica. She simply wanted one she could keep.

Harriet’s quilt began to consume more and more of Maggie’s life. She sketched blocks in the morning before leaving for Ocean View Hills. She sewed by hand with the Courtyard Quilters on her lunch hour. After work she made templates, or read books about the mill girls of Lowell, or tracked down leads at the library, longing
to know more of Harriet Findley Birch’s story. Her work friends complained that they never saw her anymore, so she made time for them when she could. They did not understand her new fascination and tentatively suggested she start dating again. “I don’t have time,” she told them.

And then came a day she had long dreaded: the day she finished sketching the one hundredth sampler block.

She called the woman from the garage sale and arranged to meet her. She carefully typed up everything she had learned about the quilt, including her unconfirmed theories about the life of Harriet Findley Birch. The woman’s eyes lit up when she saw the folded bundle in Maggie’s arms. “I was hoping you would bring it by to show me after you restored it,” she exclaimed, holding her front door open and ushering Maggie inside.

“I didn’t bring it just to show you,” said Maggie. “It’s worth much more than I paid for it and I think in all fairness I should return it to you. Or, if you’re willing, I would be very grateful if you would allow me to keep the quilt and pay you the difference.”

“Don’t be silly,” said the woman. “It sat in my garage for all those years and I did nothing with it. Thank goodness you rescued it before it was nothing more than a rag.”

“But …” Maggie hesitated. “You could probably sell it for much more than what I paid you.”

“Well, certainly,
now
. Thanks to you. You’re a sweet girl, but you don’t owe me anything for this quilt. You bought it fair and square, and if you decide to sell it for a profit, then more power to you.”

Grateful, Maggie told the woman everything she had learned about the quilt and felt herself at ease for the first time in months. But the feeling did not last. The next day she phoned Jason Birch and offered the quilt to him, the only descendant of Harriet Findley Birch she had been able to locate.

“That would be awesome,” Jason Birch replied. “I’d love to have that quilt.”

“Okay,” said Maggie, heart sinking. “Should I send it to you, or would you prefer to pick it up? I would hate to risk losing it in the mail—my heart nearly stops just thinking about it. But if the drive is too inconvenient, I could insure the package for a lot of money to encourage them to keep track of it.”

“When you put it like that …” Jason hesitated. “I should at least reimburse you for your expenses.”

“I bought it for five dollars at a garage sale.”

“What? Five bucks? In that case, keep it.”

Maggie was tempted to thank him and hang up, but she couldn’t. She could not let him turn down her offer because he believed the quilt was an old rag. “I had the quilt cleaned by an expert and I know it’s worth much more than what I paid for it. I could have it appraised if you like.”

“No. You know what? It’s not like my family
lost
Harriet’s quilt. One of us chose to sell it, and that choice has consequences. You should keep it. It’s obviously important to you. I’ll make you a deal: You keep the quilt, but let me know anything you learn about my great-grandmother.”

“I’ll do that,” Maggie promised, grateful.

Now that Harriet Findley Birch’s quilt was truly hers, the original impetus for sewing her replica was gone, but Maggie enjoyed her project too much to abandon it. Every week she stitched a few more blocks; every Saturday she met with the regulars at the quilt shop to show off her progress. A few of them asked whether she’d mind if they tried their hand at a few of the patterns. Flattered, Maggie agreed to share her drawings with them. She had completed eighty-four of the blocks and had already begun sewing them into rows.

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.