Free The Union Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini Page B

excitement filled the room. It was no small honor to be recognized for their handiwork, and they quickly agreed that they could continue to support their own regiment while also providing quilts for these other sick and wounded soldiers. Indeed, they should look beyond carrying for only their own and support all soldiers who fought for the Union.
    “How many quilts do they need?” asked Prudence. A dressmaker, she was probably calculating how many bags of scraps she had on hand at her shop and how far they would stretch.
    “They’d like sixty.” Exclamations of astonishment went up from the circle, and Dorothea raised her voice to be heard above them. “But they’ll take whatever we can give them.”
    “If they need sixty, we should give them sixty,” said Constance. “We don’t have to make them all ourselves. We’re not the only women around here who sew well enough. Let’s invite other ladies to join us.”
    “We couldn’t all fit in Dorothea’s front room,” said Charlotte, glancing around at their chairs drawn closely together. “There’s just enough room for each of us; that’s why we’ve limited our membership all these years.”
    “We could hold a quilting bee at the school,” said Eliza, who had served as the schoolteacher after Thomas, until her recent marriage. “Didn’t you do that years ago?”
    Dorothea could not have asked for a better introduction for her ambitious proposal. “We do need more space,” she agreed, “and not only for this grand quilting bee. Think of what we could accomplish if we had a place of our own to host any fund-raiser we could imagine.”
    “A place of our own?” Mrs. Claverton echoed, with a hint of amusement. The Claverton farm was adjacent to Uncle Jacob’s—now Jonathan and Charlotte’s. Not only had she known Dorothea since childhood, she had also been a member of the original library board. She could recognize the signs that Dorothea had a scheme in mind.
    “Imagine: no more asking the churches to let us rent their halls. No more restricting the attendance to our fairs and entertainments based upon how many people we can squeeze into the Barrows Inn.” Dorothea threw an apologetic look to Mrs. Barrows, who nodded ruefully and shrugged, for she knew the hotel’s dining room was too narrow for a ball and too full of echoes for lectures or musical performances. “I’m tired of working so hard to raise twenty dollars here, thirty dollars there. Aren’t you? If we had our own hall—spacious, bright, comfortable, with fine acoustics—we could raise a hundred dollars or more with a single event.”
    Constance and Lorena looked intrigued, Mary and Mrs. Claverton, amused. The others looked uncertain, or even wary. “When you say large,” queried Prudence, “what exactly did you have in mind?”
    “Large enough to comfortably accommodate six hundred people,” Dorothea replied, forging ahead with her argument before they had time to convince themselves that such an undertaking was too ambitious for a simple sewing circle. If they owned a suitable hall, they could sponsor fairs, concerts, balls, lectures, exhibitions, and other public events, including quilting bees. The money they earned selling tickets to these performances would far exceed everything they had raised thus far. They need consult no one before planning and scheduling an event, they need pay no rent—in fact, they could raise even more money for the soldiers by renting the hall to other organizations on days when they did not need it. “We have been thinking too small,” said Dorothea. “That’s not a criticism; it’s simply the truth. We’re neither accustomed nor encouraged to think beyond our own families or close circle of friends. But just as war demands noble deeds and courageous action from our men, it also demands the same from us. Yes, there is risk involved, and a great deal of work besides, but if we want to accomplish great things, we must think on a grander scale