A Quilter's Holiday: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel by Jennifer Chiaverini

out from beneath the snowdrifts another day.
    “So much snow, and it’s still November,” she mused aloud. “What do you think it means?”
    “Climate change,” said Gwen promptly. “It seems counterintuitive, but global warming can bring on harsher winters.”
    “Perhaps it means that we’ll get all our nasty weather out of the way now and enjoy an early spring,” suggested Agnes, who could always find the bright side of things even when blizzard clouds obscured the sun.
    “It’s just something we have to get through,” said Sarah, her voice strangely distant. She hadn’t sewn a single seam since the quilters returned to the ballroom, but had sat at the sewing machine staring out the windows at the falling snow, one hand resting on her abdomen. “It probably seems worse than it is.”
    “Easy for you to say,” retorted Diane. “You live here. You won’t have to drive in this.”
    “Yes, but Matt will, all winter long, and anything could happen to him.”
    At that, Diane raised her eyebrows at her friend, but Sarah didn’t notice, for she had roused herself and had begun feeding pinned quilt blocks beneath the needle of her sewing machine. “Oookay. Understood,” Diane murmured under her breath. Apparently asking Matt for a ride home if the storm worsened was not an option.
    Glancing from her work to the window so frequently that she risked a serious scissors accident, Diane cut a piece of freezer paper from the large roll left over from the summer camp season and traced templates from the magazine. An heirloom project such as her sons’ Advent calendars called for hand appliqué, and despite her rapidly approaching deadline, she couldn’t resort to machine appliqué. In her haste her hand stiches might turn out larger than usual, but from a few paces away no one would notice the difference. Her sons certainly wouldn’t subject them to such scrutiny.
    A worry tickled at the back of her mind, but she dismissed it and gathered up her fabric and freezer paper templates.
    “Are you done with the cutting table?” Anna asked, rearranging the order of the folded bundles of blue and gold fabrics in her arms, studying the contrast between one and another.
    “It’s all yours,” said Diane, clearing the rest of her supplies out of the way and heading for the ironing board. “What are you making, anyway? You never said.”
    “You never asked.” Laying out her fabrics on the cutting mat, Anna shifted ever so slightly, her back to Diane, almost as if she were hiding her work.
    “Everyone else volunteered the information.” Curious, Diane left her things on the ironing board and returned to the cutting table for a better look. This time she was sure Anna was fighting the urge to fling a yard of fabric over her work so Diane couldn’t see it. She glimpsed gold stars on a deep blue background, nothing that Anna should want to hide from friends, nothing that would inspire anything worse than constructive criticism. “It doesn’t resemble food,” Diane said helpfully, knowing that this was quite an accomplishment for Anna—unless this time she was actually
trying
to create images of food, a still life in fabric. “Come on, let’s have a look. No tossed salad jokes this time, I promise.”
    As Diane attempted to peer over her shoulder, Anna spun around and held out her arms, touching the edges of the cutting table. “Diane, a little space, please. I want this to be a surprise.”
    “I promise I won’t breathe a word to your Aunt Mabel or Cousin Bob or whoever this is for.”
    Anna smiled, but held up her hands as Diane stepped forward. “That’s close enough. I can’t have you spoiling the surprise.”
    “Spoiling it for whom?”
    “Allow me to refer you back to her aforementioned concern about spoiling the surprise,” Gwen called out, tightening the bolt on her lap hoop and gathering the folds of fabric and batting.
    “She can at least tell us who it’s for, can’t she?” protested Diane,