How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto Read Free Book Online Page A

on the bed beside him. “My favorite,” he said when she handed Hy a spoon for the ice cream. They began to chat easily, and Hy felt, was almost certain, that something had changed within her sister. It was as if something had been resolved or a fight resulted in a draw.
    Earlier, when James had asked Hy if she missed him, she wanted to say, I’ve been missing you for months, and christ, life without you is so hard and empty and I have done a terrible thing, which is to take my sister’s husband. I claimed him. I took him because you were being taken and no one asked me, so I took Arthur, unasked, and I know I’ll never recover from the love I feel for you. I wish that I could talk to Glady Joe. I wish I could ask her why our lives are so brief when we still have so much love for each other. Sometimes I envy those old married couples who never talk or touch and really don’t care much for each other’s company, because I know they won’t feel this severing, this unhappiness. It seems that our love should sustain us, instead of killing me, which is all loving you is doing for me now. Glady Joe once told me that we seek people we love in this life so after death we can be transformed into a surge of light and attract to us other particles of light, which are the essence of those people we loved on earth.
    But Hy said nothing; says nothing—not to James or to Glady Joe, who is eating ice cream, leisurely, unhurried. Who, in return, says nothing to Hy of any significance, nor to James.

 
    INSTRUCTIONS NO. 2
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    I f you quilt alone, choose your subject carefully. Expect to live with it for approximately two years, depending on the simplicity or complexity of the work. The fairly intricate quilt will contain, roughly, thirty-five pieces per block. Perhaps a thousand pieces in the finished quilt. Shake your head in amazement at the occasional quilt that boasts
thousands
of pieces. Puzzle out the fact that a single woman could hold all those pieces together without misplacing, losing, or mistaking a piece. Understand that she must be someone of extraordinary strength and organization and discipline. Someone who is a stranger to the false step in life; someone a mother would admire. Question whether you would share your mother’s admiration.
    The 1933 Sears, Roebuck Quilt Contest boasted an accumulated cash prize of $7,500; $1,200 for the first-prize winner alone. Manna in the thirties. Shoes for the children. Rent paid up; food to eat. Pressure off your husband for a few months, only until the country turns that fabled corner and rights itself. Read where the judges received 24,878 entries. Do a quick calculation of time and cloth pieces. Understand the sum to be breathtaking: hundreds of years of time spent quilting millions of pieces. How to keep it all in order. Under control.
    It is not simply the color and design, but the intricate stitch-work involved. Miles of small, perfect stitches, uniform, each as the smallest link in the overall pattern of beauty and grace. All hand-sewn, with the Singer machine idle by the wall. You know quilters.Boggles the mind. Forces you to sit down at your kitchen table, eyes closed, hand to your forehead, crushed under the weight of all those numbers.
    Send away for a quilt kit from
Good Housekeeping
. Something with a complete scene as opposed to a repeating pattern. Perhaps a large house set back on grassy acreage. Fill it with children and a husband. Close your eyes and imagine the smells of cooked food wafting from the kitchen. Roast chicken and rosemary potatoes. Chocolate cake for dessert. A canary in the window that sings on command. The trees in the garden are lemon, peach, and orange. Bicycles near the garage; workshed containing your husband’s tools and workbench. Clouds in the blue sky (be sure to place extra stuffing in the clouds for effect); eating outside at the redwood table. We all love each other.
    Or picture a body of deep-blue water in the South Pacific. The