Elm Creek Quilts [12] The Winding Ways Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini

learning to quilt waxed and waned. Some years several cousins brought small sewing projects to demonstrate their improving skills; other times no one, not even Judy, had anything to show for the previous twelve months. Once, when Judy was thirteen, her cousin Carrie ventured a question the girls had only whispered to one another: What would Grandma do with the tulip quilt if none of her granddaughters learned how to finish it?
    As if she could not believe her ears, Grandma drew herself up, her mouth tightening. “I certainly hope it won’t come to that. I do hope at least one of you cares enough to preserve your great-grandmother’s legacy and my sister’s memory.”
    Stinging from the rebuke and reminded anew how much she longed to call the tulip quilt her own, Judy resolved to learn to quilt before another Easter came.
    Back home, having learned all she could from library books and craft kits, she asked her mother to help her find a quilting class. Within a week, Tuyet enrolled Judy in a beginner’s course at a quilt shop a half-hour drive from their home. At first the instructor was reluctant to accept a much younger student, but at Tuyet’s insistence, she allowed Judy to sit in on the first day, after which she agreed that Judy could remain in the course. When Judy proved herself an apt pupil, willing to hear criticism and never failing to participate diligently, the teacher forgot her earlier resistance and often stayed after class to help Judy master a challenging skill. By the end of the summer, Judy had completed her first bed-size sampler top, and with the help of her fellow students, she spent the last day of class layering and basting it. Her teacher showed her how to adjust the lap hoop to hold the layers snugly but not too taut, how to pop the thread through the back of the quilt and conceal the knot within the batting, and how to take small rocking stitches with her right hand while feeling beneath the quilt for the tip of the needle with her left.
    As autumn passed into winter, Judy developed a callus on her fingertip and noted with increasing delight that the stitches, which had become smaller and more precise with practice, gave her sampler new dimension, grace, and depth. After spring rains had melted the winter snows, Judy’s mother drove her to the quilt shop so her former teacher could demonstrate how to finish the quilt with a narrow, double-fold bias strip that concealed the raw edges of the quilted top. Judy stitched the last few inches of binding to the back of her quilt on the long drive to her grandmother’s house on Good Friday, tying the last knot just as they crossed the border into Ohio.
    Judy could not wait until Easter morning to unveil her masterpiece. As soon as she had hung up her jacket and properly greeted everyone, she lugged her tote bag into the living room and brought out her sampler quilt—made entirely by hand, twelve different blocks, some pieced, some appliquéd, some a little bit of both. As Grandma put on her glasses to inspect her stitches, Judy told everyone about her quilting class, how many months she had spent and spools of thread she had used up, and how she was going to put the quilt on her bed back home and sleep beneath it every night. Everyone wanted a closer look at her quilt; everyone complimented her handiwork, even the boys, even Carrie, the second most accomplished quilter of the cousins.
    Grandma was the last to speak. “Very well done,” she proclaimed, and that meant it was so. Judy had never known a prouder moment.
    That night, Judy and Susan slept on top of their sleeping bags and shared Judy’s pretty new quilt as a cover. “You’ve won the tulip quilt for sure,” said Susan.
    “I don’t think it’s a contest we can win or lose,” said Judy, afraid of letting her hopes rise too much. “Grandma never said she’d automatically give the quilt to the first granddaughter who made a full-size quilt.”
    Susan squeezed her arm fondly. “Maybe