Free A Quilt for Christmas by Sandra Dallas Page A

the stars Missouri Ann had made for the quilt. It was a Log Cabin, a much-loved design because a few of the first homes in the county had been log cabins, Eliza had explained to Missouri Ann when she chose the pattern.
    â€œIs there a Soddy quilt?” Missouri Ann had asked.
    â€œIt would have to be all browns and dirty.”
    Eliza and Missouri Ann pieced the Log Cabin squares using scraps of red for the centers, because red represented the hearth, the center of the home. They placed a series of dark strips along two adjacent sides of the red squares, and light strips on the other two sides. Then they stitched the finished squares together to make a second pattern, called “Barn Raising.” The quilt was a pattern within a pattern. What made the quilt different from other Log Cabins were the white stars that Missouri Ann cut out and appliquéd to each red center before the “logs” were added around the sides. She cut the stars without a pattern. Some were lopsided, the legs unequal, and the sizes varied. But the quilters were charmed by the variety. They spent several minutes deciding whether to quilt an outline around the stars or to make an X through the red square. They decided on the latter, perhaps because the stitching would go quicker.
    â€œI never saw a thing so pretty. Why, with this quilt over you, you’d know you were sleeping under the sky,” Anna said. She was a little thing, not more than a few years over twenty, with the blue eyes and yellow hair of a china doll. Eliza was amazed that such a delicate woman could work so hard. Anna had always been fashionably dressed, with clothes she made herself and wore over hoops, and her children were as spotless as children could be. When Eliza had first seen the Beans’ little stone house, she’d thought it looked like a drawing from Peterson’s Magazine, with its antimacassars and a paisley shawl draped over the love seat, the vase of beaded flowers, an arrangement of dried grasses. Now Anna did the plowing and planting, too. Eliza noticed that Anna’s dress was frayed, and the sleeve soiled, the jacket loose. The woman was barefoot, as well, although she still wore hoops. The war had taken its toll on her, but then what woman whose husband had gone to war hadn’t suffered? At least her husband was still alive, Eliza thought, then bit her lip. She would not let herself think “what if”—what if Anna’s husband had died instead of Will. She would be glad that Cosby Bean was still alive.
    â€œI believe I’d like to make a quilt like this with stars, a good quilt that I could pass down to my daughter and granddaughter so’s they’d remember Cosby fought to save the nation,” Anna continued.
    â€œYou think someday our granddaughters will sit like this over a quilt frame, maybe right here in Wabaunsee County, Kansas?” Mercy asked.
    â€œI hope it won’t be in wartime,” Eliza said. “I’d rather think of them stitching in happier days, without any worries—and without any slaves to be freed.” Or husbands dead on a battlefield, she thought. She hoped their granddaughters would not know such sorrow.
    â€œCosby doesn’t approve of slavery, but he didn’t join up to free the slaves. He’s fighting to preserve the Union,” Anna said.
    â€œIt’s the same thing, ain’t it?” Missouri Ann asked. She had taken eight tiny stitches on her needle and pulled it through the quilt, making sure each stitch was tight.
    â€œIt is, and it isn’t,” Ettie explained, glancing at Missouri Ann’s stitches, then nodding her approval. As the most outspoken woman in the group, Ettie liked to preside over discussions, and the others generally yielded to her, because she was considered a deep thinker.
    The women were silent, until Eliza said, “Well, what of it is and what of it isn’t?”
    Ettie paused to make a tiny knot