A Carding Chronicle by Sonja Hakala
Human beings are masters of many things, not the least of which is procrastination. When faced with a deadline that’s a month away, most folks won’t make a move until the must-be-done-by date is a week away.
And then there are some folks who wait even longer.
Carding’s mail carrier, Ruth Goodwin, wasn’t as bad as some when it came to putting things off. As she often told her friends: “I like to have at least five minutes to sit back and appreciate what I’ve made before I give it away.”
But it had been so busy lately. First there was her daughter Sarah getting engaged to “the right man,” a fact that brought a grin to Ruth’s face every time she thought about it. It had taken a lot of time for Ruth to make sure that everyone who needed to know did know about Sarah’s engagement, particularly her ex-husband (the man known locally as the Good Dentist). Ruth especially liked the part when she got to inform him that he would, indeed, be financially responsible for their daughter’s wedding.
Which was only fair because Sarah had been ignored by her father all her life.
When he protested, Ruth administered a bit of verbal arm-twisting, threatening to tell his current wife—What’s-Her-Name—about his current mistress—Whosit. And since the Good Dentist was already paying alimony to three ex-wives, including Ruth, she knew he couldn’t afford a fourth.
On top of the engagement news to spread, Ruth signed herself up for three classes at the Carding Academy of Traditional Arts—one in shibori-style fabric dying, another in advanced embroidery techniques, and a third in calligraphy. Ruth had never allowed herself to take three classes at the same time but they all looked so interesting she couldn’t resist.
But now she regretted that decision because she had a purple problem as in how on earth was she going to make a mini-quilt to put in the mail on Monday when it was already Saturday night?
When her friend Edie Wolfe asked her to join the Purple Pros Mini Swap to raise money for ovarian cancer research, Ruth said yes without even thinking about it. It was such a good cause, one that never got enough attention—or funding.
The rules were simple—every participant paid $15 to participate with $5 going to cover the costs of postage and paper and $10 to support ovarian cancer research. The swap organizer, Edie’s sister Rosie, then paired everyone up, mailing each participant the contact information for their partner along with a small piece of purple fabric that had to be included in the final mini-quilt.
As the small quilts were made and mailed, pictures of them appeared on the Purple Pros website.
Now Ruth prided herself on her quilt designs so she wanted her purple mini to be breathtaking. But breathtaking takes time and somehow the minutes of September and then October had dribbled away while inspiration ignored her. So, desparate for an idea, she turned to her scrap box.
“There’s got to be something I can use in here,” Ruth muttered as she pushed and pulled her way through her collection.
Now there’s something you need to know about quilters and their scrap boxes. Not only do they hold odds and ends of fabric, they hold memories. A bit of leftover orange binding could bring back memories of a shopping trip with friends. A stack of white circles could be left over from a frenzied Christmas-present making event with a child. And a square of flannel from a shirt could recall a lost Dad or brother.
It didn’t take long for Ruth to get waylaid in a fabric reverie while her Purple Pros problem remained unsolved. Discouraged, she was just about to shut the box when her fingers flipped up a small patchwork heart. When she fished it out from the bottom of the pile, two more hearts came with it.
“Andrea,” Ruth whispered. “It’s been a while.”
Among quilters in the Corvus River Valley, Ruth’s friend Andrea Karlsen had been a legend. A tiny woman with the briskness of a January cold snap, Andrea had played a key role in the formation of the Carding Quilt Guild back in the sewing wilderness of the 1970s when nobody made quilts much less talked about them.
Back then, there was no such thing as a quilt shop, no quilt shows, no quilt classes or even teachers. And the quality of the fabric…Ruth shuddered at the memory of the loosely woven, too-often synthetic, blah-colored stuff that talented women such as Andrea had endured before somebody recognized there was money to be made in high-quality, colorful cotton fabric.
As she smoothed the three hearts out on her sewing table, Ruth chuckled over her favorite “Andrea story.”
After a lot of trial and error, Andrea finally finished her first quilt top, and went shopping for something to use for its back in the old Woolworth’s store in White River Junction. “The only thing they had that was remotely acceptable was this wretched dark orange stuff,” Andrea would tell her audience. “It was the only choice if I wanted to finish my quilt. The trouble was, I had no idea how much fabric I needed. Ten yards struck me as a nice round number so that’s what I bought.”
Now, ten yards of fabric is enough to back a queen-sized quilt. But Andrea’s first quilt was made to fit a crib so when she was done, she had a lot of that godawful orange stuff left over.
The awful orange stuff sat for years in her stash cabinet while Andrea helped form the Carding Quilt Guild, served on the committee of the first Carding Quilt Show, and became the first quilting teacher at the Carding Academy of Traditional Arts.
In fact, the awful orange stuff didn’t resurface until the members of the guild decided to do an ugly fabric swap at their annual holiday party. Every participant put a quarter-yard of disliked fabric in a closed bag, all the bags were placed on a central table, and each participant chose a bag that was not her own.
As you can imagine, the quarter-yard of Andrea’s godawful orange stuff got the biggest groan of the evening. As a matter of fact, it got the biggest groan the Christmas after that and the Christmas after that.
By the fourth Christmas, guild members started to watch carefully when Andrea arrived, noting the size and shape of the paper bag she carried because nobody wanted to get stuck with her godawful orange stuff. But as soon as she knew no one was looking, Andrea would slide a different bag onto the table.
And so the saga of the godawful orange fabric went on for years until every one of the guild members had some.
When she finally moved into assisted living near her daughter, Andrea proudly told her friends that she had only one-half yard of the godawful orange stuff left and Ruth promptly offered to throw it away.
The patchwork hearts on Ruth’s sewing table had been among the last blocks Andrea shared with her fellow guild members before she moved. As luck would have it, they were the perfect complement for the purple cloth waiting for Ruth’s attention.
She glanced at the clock. It was late but she decided to sew anyway. She could sleep some other time. Now she had a deadline to meet, and a dear friend to remember.
