Authors: Arlene Sachitano
Aunt Beth wasn't willing to have the argument that would have ensued had she asked Harriet to participate in the selection.
"This will be a start,” she'd said. “As grey as it is here, we can't have you skulking around in widow's weeds. You'll scare the customers away."
Finally, Harriet put on jeans and a white T-shirt and, in last-minute defiance, wrapped a long black chiffon scarf around her neck, tossing the tail over her shoulder.
She glanced at her watch; it was five minutes fast. She did a quick calculation and decided her first customer would be here in seven minutes.
The first customer of the day would be Aunt Beth's oldest friend, Avanell Jalbert. Avanell was a charter member of the group Aunt Beth belonged to; they called themselves The Loose Threads. Harriet used to go to meetings with Aunt Beth during the summers, when she was in junior high school; but according to Aunt Beth, only Avanell and longtime Foggy Point resident Mavis Willis remained from those days.
The group met every Tuesday morning in the classroom of Foggy Point's only quilt store, Pins and Needles.
She left the warm safety of the kitchen and entered the long-arm quilting studio. The studio had been a large parlor on the first floor of the three-story Victorian home. On the outside wall of the rectangular room, Aunt Beth had added a bow-windowed alcove and a door to the outside. The room was separated from the rest of the house by two locking doors—one leading to the kitchen, the other the dining room.
The alcove, which functioned as a reception area, held two chintz-covered easy chairs and a dark cherry piecrust table. Harriet crossed the room to the table and picked up the electric water pot. She went back to the kitchen, filled the pot and returned it to the table. Unmatched china cups, a basket of teabags and a full assortment of sweeteners crowded the tabletop. She arranged the cups and tea basket twice and, when she was satisfied the alcove looked sufficiently inviting to her customers, crossed the room to look for more of the decorated napkins she knew Aunt Beth had stashed somewhere.
She was bent over, opening lower cabinet doors in succession, searching, when the doorbell jingled and her first customer walked in.
"Hello,” she said and banged her knee on the open cabinet door. She couldn't believe she had greeted her first-ever customer with a view of her rear end.
She grabbed her knee as she stood up and dropped the napkins in the process.
"I'm sorry,” she said. “I'll be right with you."
"Take your time,” Avanell said. “I'll just help myself to some tea, if that's okay."
"Oh, yes, please.” Harriet picked up the napkins and brought them over to the table. Avanell had her tea steeping, had clipped the end of a honey straw and was stirring her tea with the open straw, dumping its contents into the hot liquid.
"You look just like you did when I left for college” Harriet asked.
"Aren't you sweet! I still had dark hair when you left, but it was from a bottle, even back then.” She laughed. “I quit that nonsense a few years ago.” She tucked an errant gray strand behind her ear. You look like you just got on the plane yesterday, and of course, your aunt has told me everything that's happened with you since the day you left."
"Only the good parts, I hope,” she said, and wondered exactly how much Aunt Beth had told her friends in Foggy Point about her recent past. At the very least, the women would know she'd been widowed. Whether she'd filled them in on Steve's genetic illness that probably could have been treated, had he and his family not worked so hard to keep it a secret, would remain to be seen.
She poured her own cup of tea, sizing up Avanell in the process. She was a short stocky woman in her late fifties. She wore a tailored skirt in charcoal-grey wool flannel and a maroon paisley blouse with a cardigan sweater that looked like it had been hand-knit. Her grey hair was in a loose bun on the top of her head. She looked like the grandmother most children only dream of.
"Beth says you can run that long-arm machine even better than she does,” Avanell said.
Harriet felt herself blushing. “I'm not sure I would go that far. My style is a little different from Aunt Beth's."
"Honey, no two quilters stitch exactly the same."
Harriet knew that was true, but she was also aware that most machine quilters had a signature pattern they used so often the judges at competitions could generally tell who had done the stitching on a piece without being told. She hoped to break that mold. She wanted her stitching to complement each individual project, not outshine it.
She pulled a stack of quilted squares from a shelf under the large layout table.
"Here are samples of the quilting patterns I do,” she said. She had purposely used an array of fabrics in her samples—she had batiks, Civil War prints, thirties reproductions, brights, Asian prints and flannels. She hoped the woman would find something that matched her vision for her quilt.
"Let's spread the quilt out on the cutting table, and you can tell me what you have in mind."
Harriet gasped. Avanell had hand-dyed white cotton and made a series of pieced blocks she then alternated with squares of off-white. She had used trapunto, a technique typically done on a neutral-colored background fabric, using dense stitching and extra batting or fill material to create raised areas, often in traditional wreath or flower designs. This design would only need machine stitching in the pieced areas.
The dyed-fabric colors were vibrant and had been pieced in intricate patterns. The points in the pieced areas were perfect and the color transitions seamless. It was utterly different from anything Harriet had ever seen. If this exemplified Avanell's stress level, she hoped it didn't go down anytime soon.
Avanell favored a wreath-like pattern from the samples that would give a circular impression to echo the curved lines of the trapunto. The border areas would be stitched with closely placed parallel lines that were set on a diagonal and would pull the eye inward toward the design. Harriet made careful notes regarding the lines and patterns.
"I'll put your quilt on the machine first thing,” she said.
She gathered the sample squares up, carefully organizing them by stitch type. She fumbled and dropped the stack.
"Let me help you,” Avanell said and smiled. “Are you nervous with your aunt being out of the country?"
"Does it show?” Harriet asked, knowing that it wasn't Aunt Beth's absence as much as her aunt's preemptive strike on her future that had her distracted. If she dropped anything else, Avanell was likely to gather her quilt up and run for the nearest exit.
"Only a little,” Avanell replied. “Listen,” she said “The Vitamin Factory is just down the hill. It wouldn't be out of my way to drop back by when I go to lunch to see how you're doing."
"That would be great,” Harriet said. She couldn't believe she was acting like such a nervous fool. She was confident in her quilting ability; and when she'd moved to California, she'd made unique home furnishing accent pieces for an upscale furniture shop, so it wasn't like she hadn't ever had her work scrutinized by a paying customer.
Somehow, though, being in Foggy Point, where she would have to see those customers every time she went into the grocery store or picked up her mail at the post office was intimidating. And in spite of everything, she did want to do a good job, and Aunt Beth would be a hard act to follow.
It seemed like only moments had passed, but she had loaded the pieced top and its backing and batting onto the long-arm machine's frame and had stitched the first square area. She straightened and was rubbing the small of her back when the doorbell rang and signaled Avanell's return.
"I just finished the first part,” Harriet said. “Come see."
Avanell didn't need an invitation; she came over and inspected the work. Harriet held her breath as Avanell rubbed her fingertips lightly over the closely spaced rows of parallel stitching.
"This is just what I'd imagined,” she said and smiled.
Harriet took a breath of air. Maybe she would survive the next couple of weeks after all.
"I'm going to run down to The Sandwich Board and get a bite to eat,” Avanell said. “Would you like to join me? I thought I'd pop into Pins and Needles and look at the new Hoffman prints Marjory just got in on the way back."
Pins and Needles was the local quilt goods store, located in downtown Foggy Point and boasting seven thousand bolts of fabric as well as every tool and notion on the market—at least, it seemed that way to its devoted customers. Marjory Swain had purchased the store seven years before when the previous owner decided to trade the gray winters of Foggy Point for the sunny warmth of Mesa, Arizona.
In its past life the store had been oriented more toward the practical fabrics used in the construction of clothes—Marjory still kept a small room at the back of the shop devoted to dressmaking supplies—but Pins and Needles's main focus now was the making of quilts.
No matter how large or small, every reputable quilt shop can be counted on to carry the high-quality long-staple cotton that can be trusted not to shrink, twist, bleed or wear out before its time, as well as cotton thread imported from Germany and wound on slender spools in an array of neutral colors. They all carried several sizes and thicknesses of both cotton and wool batting, too.
Harriet made a point of checking out the quilt store in every city she visited. Foggy Point was no different. She'd badgered Aunt Beth into taking her to Pins and Needles the day she'd arrived.
Aunt Beth had opened the door to the shop, and a light floral scent had enveloped them. The main room was filled with bolts of colorful fabric. At the end of each row of shelves was a display of quilted samples artfully arranged around scented candles that she'd learned were made at a shop around the corner.
"Can I help you find anything?” Marjory had asked.
"I'm just getting my bearings,” she'd replied.
"There's cookies in the kitchen there on your left, and if you need the bathroom it's behind the small classroom to the right."
Harriet found chocolate chip cookies on a hand-thrown pottery plate on the Formica-topped kitchen table. Two coffeepots and an electric hot water pot sat on a countertop beside the small sink at the back of the room. She'd grabbed two cookies and then strolled up and down the fabric aisles. Civil War prints, thirties reproductions, an ample selection of both pastel and bright children's fabric—Harriet ticked the selections off her mental list. This would do quite nicely.
Two large carved oak hutches stood along one wall and held the small tools and accessories that helped make any project go together smoothly. Harriet had noticed two Amish-style quilts her aunt had made hanging with several others on a cable that was strung from the rafters.
Marjory had followed Harriet's gaze to the display. “We try to change the quilts every month, but I'm a little late this time. Some months it's hard to think up an appropriate theme. When you get settled, you can join in if you want.” She'd looked hopeful, but Harriet didn't plan on being here long enough to make a theme-quilt for a display. Even if she did think it was a clever way to keep people engaged.
"I'd love to come to lunch,” Harriet said to Avanell, turning her thoughts back to the present. “I haven't been to The Sandwich Board yet, either. Is it good?"
"They have a roast pork tenderloin on focaccia with fresh basil and homemade mozzarella that's to die for,” Avanell told her.
"Let me get my purse.” She went through the connecting door to the kitchen, grabbed her purse and denim jacket from the closet by the back door and left with her aunt's friend.
"How's it feel to be home?” Avanell asked as she put the car in reverse, maneuvered it into a tight circle and then turned it down the driveway.
Home? Harriet thought. This wasn't home. Not her home, anyway. She looked out the car window. The pastel-painted Victorian houses that lined Aunt Beth's street could just as easily have been in San Francisco, or even some parts of Oakland. As they dropped down the hill toward town the larger houses gave way to smaller bungalow cottages, tucked behind neatly planted juniper bushes and dogwood trees.
The car gave a sharp bounce, and Harriet jumped.
"Sorry,” Avanell said. “Hot flash."
Her comment barely registered. The salt air rushed over Harriet. She held her breath but finally let it out with a gasp. She resisted with every fiber of her being, but it was no use—she
was
home. She could kid herself and try to pretend that her home was Oakland, but she'd felt it as soon as she'd driven into town, and waited while a doe and her twin fawns crossed Main Street unmolested and disappeared into a grove of pine trees. She'd been sure when she'd cruised past coffee shops with names like Human Beans and Lucy's Lattes—not a franchise business as far as the eye could see.
She ran her fingers through her close-cropped hair.
"We gave the Vitamin Factory a face lift a few years ago,” Avanell pointed out as the neighborhood gave way to a light industrial area. She slowed as she drove past her long, low building.
"I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't remember what it used to look like."
"No reason you should,” Avanell smiled. “You were a teenager. You had much more on your mind than industrial buildings. Just for the record, we removed the fifties style brick facade from the office area and replaced all the old pink siding with dark green Hardy plank."
"It looks nice,” Harriet offered.
Avanell laughed and turned the car left over the bridge that carried them across the Muckleshoot River and into the downtown area.
"Things look different here. What happened to the library?” Harriet asked.
"They built a new one two blocks over. Did a nice job, too. It looks Victorian, but without all the leaky pipes and crumbling plaster of the original.
Avanell guided her car to the curb in front of the restaurant and parked.
The food at the Sandwich Board was every bit as good as Avanell had promised. Harriet ordered the pork loin sandwich, while Avanell opted for egg salad on fresh-baked multi-grain bread with fresh basil and an aioli-style mayonnaise.