Chapter 15 #2
studio, sat down quietly, and just watched and listened. When we finished for the day, he rose, thanked me politely, and left.
When we resumed the next morning, he came in, sat down, and listened again. His presence was rather unnerving. I assumed he
didn’t like what he was hearing, but he didn’t offer any direction or criticism, so I just carried on.”
“Little did you know that he had fallen for you,” said Ellen, smiling.
“That honestly hadn’t occurred to me,” Julia admitted. “He was seven years older than I, and he was so much more successful
and distinguished that I assumed he was, well, already married and settled. And he was a consummate professional. He didn’t
ask me out until a full two weeks after production wrapped. By the time we attended the Oscars together the following year,
and Threads and Ashes won for Best Documentary, I was head over heels in love. Two years after that, we were married, and we lived happily ever
after—” Her voice caught in her throat. “For as long as we could.”
Paige smiled, and except for the tears lingering on her eyelashes, one would not have known she had been desperately unhappy
only moments before. “So you’re telling me that by losing this role, I’ll get another one that will lead me to true love?”
Julia cleared her throat and managed a smile. “I can’t promise that, but one never knows.”
As a ripple of laughter passed through the company, Paige laughed too and dried her eyes. “I think you would’ve been fantastic in The Music Man,” she said. “They really missed out.”
“So did whoever failed to get you on contract for this movie, Paige,” declared Olivia, planting a hand on her hip. “Whatever
it is, I’ll refuse to see it on principle.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” said Paige, shaking her head, still bewildered. “They did send my agent a contract. I was supposed to sign it on Monday, after we get back to LA.”
Julia gasped, and she was not alone. “They’d already sent you a contract?” asked Ellen. “And they, what, asked your agent
to tear it up?”
“That’s not the only strange thing,” said Louis. “Before her agent called with the bad news, someone had already emailed Paige
about arranging a shoot for publicity photos, and the head costumer asked to schedule her first fitting.”
Murmurs of surprise rose from the company and significant glances were exchanged. “That’s rather odd,” Julia managed to say.
“Very,” said Olivia, shaking her head. “Still, it doesn’t surprise me. We’ve all heard stories of actors who are fired after
the first dailies come in, or who don’t find out they’ve been replaced in a role until their name is missing from the call
sheet.”
“As a costumer myself,” said Edna, frowning, “I’m surprised by that costumer’s lazy mistake. We’re better than that.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Louis. “People other than Paige and her agent believed she had the role. Why would they?”
“Poor communication?” Julia suggested faintly.
Louis shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. But something isn’t right.”
“Maybe you should talk to your agent again,” Ellen said to Paige. “She might not have any more information to share, but if
you think it would make you feel better—”
“Sometimes it’s better not to know why you didn’t get a role,” Julia broke in hastily. “Sometimes it’s best to accept the
loss and move on.”
“That’s a fair point,” said Nigel. “Why pour salt into a wound?”
Paige wiped her eyes and steeled herself with a deep breath. “I think I could move on more quickly if I understood what happened. I’ll call my agent. If I find out what went wrong, I can learn from it and do better next time.”
“That’s the spirit,” Nigel declared, but Julia sensed impending disaster.
“Sorry to interrupt, but is everything all right?”
The company turned to find Gretchen standing in the ballroom doorway, regarding them with concern.
“Oops,” said Edna. “What time is it?”
“Quarter past.” Gretchen gave them a searching look. “We’ve never misplaced an entire class before. When not one of our students
showed up this morning, we sent out a search party. Well, I sent myself. I’m the search party.”
“I’m so sorry,” Paige exclaimed, bolting to her feet. “It’s my fault. I kept everyone back.”
“No harm done,” Gretchen assured her, smiling as she beckoned the students to accompany her into the ballroom.
Julia hung back as her colleagues followed Gretchen into the ballroom, murmuring to one another incredulously, shaking their
heads, assuring Paige that everything would be all right eventually, somehow. “Wait,” Julia called after them feebly, but
no one glanced back. She should explain—but what could she say that wouldn’t make everything worse?
Perhaps it would be better to wait until everyone had calmed down. Quilting would soothe their tempers, or so Julia hoped.
Hurrying after her friends, she found them not gathered around the quilting frame, as she had expected, but in their familiar classroom.
Maggie and Sarah stood at the instructors’ table, chatting quietly as Sarah unrolled a bolt of forest-green fabric on the cutting mat.
As before, two student tables stood side by side in the center of the room covered in a clean, white sheet, but this time, Sarah’s Chandelier quilt was spread out upon it, the top facing up, allowing them to admire the beautiful patterns of stitches etched into the surface.
Only the edges remained unfinished, with all three layers of top, batting, and backing still visible.
“Since today is your last full day of camp, we’re going to skip ahead and teach you how to bind a quilt,” said Gretchen as
the students seated themselves at the remaining tables. “Yours is still on the frame, so we’ll practice on Sarah’s, which,
thanks to you, is finally quilted.”
“Just in time, too,” said Sarah. “There’s a queue of Elm Creek Quilters waiting to use the longarm, and I’ve tested their
patience long enough.”
“She’s kidding,” Gretchen added so quickly that the company laughed. “Well, there is a queue, but we’re not impatient.”
“No?” teased Sarah. “I bet you’ll have your top for the Christmas boutique on the rollers by lunchtime.”
“The first step in finishing a quilt is to remove it carefully from the rollers, the frame, or the hoop,” said Maggie, deftly
steering the class back on topic. “We’ll show you how to remove your Nine-Patch quilt from the frame tomorrow morning, but
we’ll leave it there for now, so you can continue working on it after our binding lesson.”
First, Sarah explained, they would trim the batting and the backing even with the quilt top. “Some quilters prefer to use
a ruler and rotary cutter,” she noted, taking a gleaming pair of dressmaker’s shears in hand, “but we’re doing this Sadie
Henderson style, with scissors.”
“I doubt that my great-grandmother ever had scissors that nice,” Ellen observed as Sarah bent over her quilt, smoothed the
edge flat with a long acrylic ruler, and carefully trimmed the excess batting and backing until all three layers were even.
After a while, Sarah handed off the scissors to Edna and invited her to take a turn.
After a few minutes, Edna inspected her work, nodded in satisfaction, and beckoned Paige to take over.
Her violet eyes still puffy from crying, she painstakingly cut along the edge until she reached the corner.
Uncertain how to proceed, she glanced questioningly to Sarah, who stepped in to demonstrate how to navigate the right angle.
When Paige finished, she offered the scissors to Julia, but Julia declined with a quick smile and a shake of her head. Paige handed them to Louis instead.
The company probably thought that Julia was demurring to give the less experienced quilters more time to practice their new
skills. She had done so quite frequently that week. They never would have guessed that she skipped her turn because her nerves
were so on edge that her hands trembled, and she didn’t trust herself with the scissors. One careless mistake, and she would
ruin Sarah’s quilt.
When all four sides of the quilt were neatly trimmed, Maggie returned to the instructors’ table and explained how to make
a bias binding to cover the raw edges of the quilt. As Gretchen and Sarah passed through the aisles distributing sheets of
paper, Maggie recited a mathematical formula for calculating the amount of fabric required to create a strip of bias binding
of a particular length and width. “You don’t need to memorize it,” she assured them. “It’s on the handout.”
“That’s a relief,” said Olivia. “I haven’t had to calculate a math formula since high school.”
“This one is easy,” Maggie promised, and to prove her point, she measured the length and width of Sarah’s Chandelier quilt,
plugged the numbers into the formula, and determined the size of a square she needed to cut from the forest-green fabric.
After cutting the square to size, she cut it in half along the diagonal, pinned the resulting triangles together along opposing
short sides, and sewed a quarter-inch seam. Next, she brought the angled edges together, offset by the width of the bias strip,
and stitched them together to form an asymmetric tube. Then, narrating each step, walking the aisles, and pausing at each
table so everyone had a chance to see her work up close, she cut on the line to create a narrow strip on the bias, rolling
it into a coil as she went along and tucking it beneath her arm to keep it from tangling.
When she finished, Maggie carried the coil to Gretchen at the pressing table.
Gretchen folded the long binding strip in half, wrong sides facing inward, and pressed it with a hot iron along its entire length, making a sharp crease.
“Doubling over the strip increases its durability,” she explained.
“That’s important because the edges of a quilt experience the most wear and tear. ”
“Would Sadie Henderson have used an electric iron, though?” asked Jason, tapping his notebook with a pencil.