A New Beginning: My Journey with Addy

I know raising money to help freed families get on their feet is important work, so I tell Addy we should go to help the benefit. Addy asks if we can go right now, and Momma says yes, just to be careful on the walk. She’ll join us soon.

The church meeting hall is even more crowded than it was yesterday. Men, women, and children rush past carrying crates and calling out to each other, and the noise and bustle make the whole room feel electric.

Addy and I hurry inside together, and Mrs. Drake, the reverend’s wife, claps her hands for quiet and declares that anyone who hasn’t found a way to help yet can join the quilt raffle, since they need lots of volunteers to make squares. Addy’s eyes light up at once, and she pulls me toward the quilting table. I want to help too, I tell her, but I don’t know how to sew a single stitch. Addy just laughs and promises she’ll teach me. It’ll be fun.

At the table, baskets overflow with spools of colored thread, scissors, and squares of white cloth waiting for a design. Addy already has a plan: a cloth flower pinned onto her square, five petals gathered around a round center. She threads my needle for me and shows me the blanket stitch, guiding my hand along the fabric edge while women around us chit-chat in cheerful voices.

I go slowly, remembering Gran’s old advice about needlework: just do your best. My best turns out pretty sloppy next to Addy’s neat, even stitching. Nearby, a young woman tells the group that every dollar raised will help freed families and pay for hospitals treating wounded soldiers, and an older woman adds that some of the money will support widows and orphans too. A girl beside her mentions that her brother is fighting for the Union. Listening to them, I understand all over again how much this quilt matters to people I have never even met.

When I finally sit back to look at my work, my stomach sinks. My square is a crooked, lopsided mess. The petals bunch unevenly around the center, and the thread has knotted and puckered along one whole edge. Addy’s flower looks lovely enough to hang in a frame, and mine looks like it belongs nowhere near a raffle table.

Mrs. Drake works her way down the table, gathering finished squares to add to the quilt. My palms go damp. Someone is going to pay good money for this quilt, and I cannot let my clumsy stitching ruin the whole project. Before she reaches us, I fold my square shut so she cannot see the mess I have made. Mrs. Drake rests a hand on Addy’s shoulder and asks if she can help sort some of the cloth Mrs. Ford donated. Addy hops right up, tells me to keep on working, and promises she’ll be back soon as she can. Then she disappears into the crowd at Mrs. Drake’s side, leaving me alone with my square.

I look down at it again, turning it over in my hands. Is it even worth trying to fix? Across the room, a man is braiding old rags into rugs beside a bin overflowing with fabric scraps. It strikes me that my square might be better off there than pinned to a quilt somebody is counting on to raise real money.

The women and girls at the table are absorbed in their own stitching and do not notice as I slip away from my chair. I drift across the hall, past Mrs. Walker just coming in from outside, still unwinding her scarf from around her neck. I step closer to the rag bin. Should I toss my square into the bin? Or should I wait to show it to Addy. Maybe she’ll have an idea of how to fix it.