Miriam's Quilt by Jennifer Beckstrand

Author:Jennifer Beckstrand [Beckstrand, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Amish
ISBN: 9781609367701
Publisher: Summerside Press
Published: 2013-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

Sighing, Miriam deposited the bags on her bed and sat down next to them. She had bought five fat quarters and the blue-and-green fabric plus batting and a new rotary cutter blade. She tipped the bags upside down and let her treasures tumble onto the bed.

Would Seth like the colors she picked? Ephraim certainly hadn’t. She’d almost gone to the stable this morning to ask Seth’s opinion, just to be sure. She desperately wanted him to like the quilt, but she also wanted it to be a surprise. Lord willing, blue and green were his favorite colors. Either those or snakeskin purple.

Miriam decided to frame each quilt block with the dark blue of Seth’s childhood blanket and put the new green-and-blue from the fabric store on the back. Even if Seth didn’t end up liking it, she could barely contain her enthusiasm. This would be a fine quilt.

She pulled her sewing basket from under the bed and opened it. The blocks for Ephraim’s Nine-Patch lay at the top, finished and ready to assemble. She had taken such care with these, the corners expertly matched, the seams ironed smartly. Today, the painful memories did not reduce her to tears. Perhaps she was numb. Or perhaps the sorrow had been with her so long, she had grown accustomed to it.

Miriam nearly tossed the burgundy-and-tan blocks into the trash. She didn’t need the reminder every time she opened her sewing basket. Instead, she wrapped them in one of the plastic bags from the fabric store and stuffed them into the very bottom of her basket. Throwing all that hard work away would be wasteful. In a few years, when it didn’t hurt so much, she could pull out the blocks and make a quilt for charity.

She pulled graph paper and a pencil from her supplies and began drawing plans for Seth’s quilt, hoping he would love it as much as she would. Five-by-six squares would make a quilt big enough to cover his small bed at the stable. She filled in the grid with images of her favorite quilt block designs. Log Cabin, Flying Geese, Bear’s Paw, Hole-in-the-Barn-Door…but no Nine-Patch. Ephraim’s quilt was a Nine-Patch. She wanted nothing to do with it.

Shading squares with her colored pencils, she was engrossed in her drawing when Susie ambled into the room and sat beside her on the bed.

“Oh, how very pretty,” she said as she examined Miriam’s sketch.

Miriam looked up and flashed her a smile before returning to her work. “I will make one for the baby next. You can pick the colors.”

She didn’t expect the shadow that passed across Susie’s face. “Unless I give him up. There would be no use in making him a quilt if I don’t keep him.”

Miriam set aside her notebook and took Susie’s face in her hands. “Giving him to a gute family doesn’t mean that you love him less. And I will make him a quilt no matter what happens. He will always be your baby, even if he belongs to someone else.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.