The Star She Gave Away Twice

Now I wrote out every measurement, every cut, every press. I drew the diagrams by hand on graph paper and scanned them on Hugh’s printer, which complained the whole time.

It took me eleven nights. I wrote the cutting chart for the twelve-inch block, then again for a six-inch block, because the women with arthritis in their hands like the bigger pieces and the young ones like a challenge.

I wrote which way to press each seam so the points would lie flat.

I wrote the little trick with the two squares, and I wrote it plain enough that a twelve-year-old could follow it.

At the top of the first page, in the biggest letters the computer would make, I typed: The Ozark Star, designed by Marla Quist, West Plains, Missouri.

Under that, in smaller letters, I typed: Free to share. Please teach it to somebody.

I printed thirty copies on the library’s machine the Friday before, four pages each, ten cents a page. It came to twelve dollars even. Mrs. Ferris would not let me pay at first, and I would not let her refuse, and finally she rang it up with a look that said she was letting me win.

I did not tell the guild. I want to be honest that I thought about it.

A good part of me wanted Gwen to see that notice in the paper and lie awake over it.

But I also knew Gwen did not take the paper anymore, because she and Don had cut it along with a dozen other things over the winter.

I just did not know yet how many other things.

On Saturday morning I was up at five. Hugh was up at five too, because he always is, and he made the coffee while I packed the car.

Two big thermoses, a box of cinnamon rolls I had baked the night before, my good rotary cutter, my old one, three rulers, and the finished red and navy block I had made special for showing.

We got to the library at a quarter to eight. Mrs. Ferris had already unlocked the meeting room and set up every folding table the building owned in rows, with two chairs to a table.

The room has tall windows on the east side and bookshelves along the back wall where they keep the old county histories, and the morning light was coming through so bright that you could see dust floating over the tables.

Hugh carried in two irons, two ironing boards and four extension cords, and taped every cord to the floor with gray duct tape so nobody would trip.

He did it slowly and carefully, the same way he does everything. When he was done, he looked around the room and nodded.

“Calves need feeding,” he said. “I’ll be back around noon with something for lunch.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know it,” he said, and kissed me on the forehead in front of Mrs. Ferris, which he does not usually do in public.

The first woman came at a quarter to nine. By nine o’clock every chair was full.

I wish you could have seen them. There were young mothers in their thirties who had learned to quilt from videos on their phones and had never sat at a table with other quilters in their lives.

There were women my age from the churches out in the county, women I knew from the grocery store and the ballgames.

There were three sisters in their seventies from out by Pomona who all wore their hair the same way and finished each other’s sentences.