“Mama,” little Liesel whined, falling into her seat at the kitchen table like a rag doll. “I’m too cold to do anything.” This was the honest truth. Snow packed against the house, challenging the Hart family’s potbelly stove.
Christmas was a month out, but their southern corner of Indiana had an early cold snap. A wee early cold snap. Piles of snow were perfect for younger children desperate for a good sledding, but Liesel was a bit older now. Colder, too.
“Here, now, doing something will warm you up,” her mother chided. “Sit up straight, Liesel.”
Liesel did as she was told, and her mother went on.
“See, now, I’m starting a new pattern, and it’s the perfect time. You said you wanted to make a quilt. Pay attention, girl.”
Liesel did want to make a quilt. And it was true that doing something would warm her up. She knew this well enough from her part-time job cleaning the parish hall. Snowed in as they were, though, there were only two options in the Hart home: scrub the toilets or listen to her mother’s quilting seminar. The latter was easily preferable. Liesel shifted her attitude accordingly.
On the table, where they’d normally have supper and read the Bible, her mother had laid out tidy stacks of materials and tools—all familiar to Liesel since it seemed that Mama Hart was always quilting. But unfamiliar, too. Liesel had been interested since she was knee-high to a grasshopper but never interested enough to sit still and watch on as her mother instructed her.
Now, though, she was old enough, and that had to count for somethin’.
“Firstly,” her mother went on, “you take stock of what you’ve got. No sense in wasting good fabric or supplies by running out to the crafting store and spending money you ain’t got.”
“What crafting store?” Liesel asked. This piqued her curiosity. If there was a crafting store, she might like to go there and browse, probably.
“Out in Louisville,” her mother answered patiently. “The Crafting House somethin’ or other.” She sighed. “Anyhow, you take your stock, see?” The woman pressed a small index finger, the nail bare and blunt and the knuckle crooked despite her relative youth. “The most important thing is the fabric. Now, if we were making a scrap quilt, maybe an antique crazy or the like, well, we’d have more options in fabric.”
“What kind are we making?” Liesel interjected, leaning forward as she inspected a tower of folded material—half of it crimson red and patterned and the other half cream colored and plain.
“Shoo-fly. It’s best to learn on a shoo-fly pattern,” her mother answered. “Bein’ as I have last year’s Christmas discount cotton, that’ll be just fine. And seein’ as we have a month, may as well push to make it in time.”
“A month?” Liesel frowned. “You never finish a quilt in a month.”
“This year I will, because I’ll have you. And anyway, we’ll keep it small.”
“Who’s it for?” Liesel asked. Her mother made quilts for baby showers and weddings and this, that, and the other.
“It’s for Little Flock. They can do with it what they please, but it’s always best to keep charity at the forefront of your mind when it comes to quiltin’.”
This was a classic Mama Hart-ism. She was service-oriented and charity-driven. Ever since Liesel could remember, they were volunteering for this or showing up to help with that.
Liesel wasn’t too sure about giving away the first ever quilt she’d make, but then if that was her stance, she probably didn’t have charity at the forefront of her mind. And therefore, she’d be breaking the first rule of quiltin’.
“You have a lot of leftover material,” Liesel pointed out, her eyes shifting to a secondary stack.
“I buy off-season. If you have a passion for something, Liesel, you do whatever you have to do.”
“So, what’s next?” Liesel asked, studying the third stack of fabric—white cotton, more supple than the other two stacks. Batting, Liesel knew. Beyond all the fabric were the other tools her mother commonly had out when she was quilting. Shears, rotary cutter, cardboard, needles, her pin cushion, prickly like a little cactus, and spools of thread. The thread she’d laid out for the day was a near match to the cream-colored cotton fabric. “Do we have to prewash and iron?” Liesel asked.
Her mother smiled. “I don’t need to prewash this. It’s nice to have the fabric stiff to begin.”
“Where’s your sewing machine?” Liesel glanced around, befuddled at its absence. An old Singer passed down from Liesel’s grandmother.
“We’re not there yet. Not by a ways,” her mother smiled and drew the back of her finger down Liesel’s cheek. “Your patience will be key with quilting, Liesel.”
Liesel took a deep breath. “I don’t have much patience,” she complained, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to generate a bit of warmth. “Can we just make some hot cocoa or somethin’?”
The woman propped her hands on her hips. “Everyone has patience. Deep down.” She collected Liesel’s hair and plaited it loosely. “This is coming from the most impatient woman of all. Trust me when I say that waiting for somethin’ increases that somethin’s value. Always.”
“If I’m patient, I’ll make a nicer quilt, I get it.”
“Patience applies to much more in life than quilting, sweet girl.” Her mother finished the plait and lowered down next to Liesel. “I promise.”
“All right then.” Liesel cinched the braid her mother had made into a tie from her wrist. “The shoo-fly quilt. Like the pie, then. Is that what the blocks will look like when it’s done? A pie? Or a fly…” She frowned, and her mother laughed.
“Another name for this pattern is the Hole in the Barn Door. We’ll cut triangles and squares and position them into something like this.” Her mother twisted to a box of scrap fabric and pulled out several pieces, folding and smoothing them into a pretty display on the table in front of Liesel. “See?”
“Hole in the Barn Door,” Liesel said dreamily, mesmerized by the pattern. A square sat prominently in the center. The top tip of a triangle kissed each corner of the square, abutted against a second triangle that matched those squares along the sides of the center square. Liesel didn’t quite see why it was called shoo-fly or hole in the barn door or anything.
“I don’t see it,” Liesel said, cocking her head and peering hard to see an image that wasn’t there.
“Well that’s the second rule of quilting,” her mother answered, sharing Liesel’s gaze. “It’s part patience, you see, and part artistry.”
“And,” Liesel added pointedly, “part magic.”