Free Elm Creek Quilts [08] The Christmas Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini

upstairs. “Has the dough rested sufficiently?” Sylvia did not know how to judge, but Claudia answered yes so confidently that Sylvia quickly chimed in her agreement rather than appear to know less than her sister. After the girls wiped the table clean, their mother covered the table with the sheet, pulled it smooth, and secured it in place with clothespins. She dusted the sheet with flour, but Sylvia noticed that she used far less than in previous years.
    Eleanor instructed her daughters to wash their hands; when they returned from the sink, fingers freshly scrubbed and patted dry, they found her rolling out one of the dough balls into a rectangle in the center of the floured sheet. When she could roll the dough no thinner with the rolling pin, she set it aside. “Watch carefully,” she instructed her daughters. “Someday you will need to know how to do this on your own.”
    She slipped her hands beneath the dough rectangle and gently stretched it, pulling carefully with the backs of her hands and her thumbs and allowing the dough to fall back upon the floured cloth. Stepping around to another side of the table, she repeated the motions until she had walked all the way around the table and stretched the dough on all four sides. “This will go faster if you two help me,” she remarked, reaching beneath the pastry dough again. “And I won’t have to walk around the table so many times.”
    Sylvia flushed with nervousness and pride as she took her place on the other side of the table from her mother. She had often watched her mother, aunts, and older cousins stretching the dough, but she and Claudia had never been permitted to join in. The fragile dough must be stretched to a uniform tissue paper thinness everywhere, with no tears and no thicker patches to ruin the delicate texture. Sylvia’s touch was at first tentative, but then as she saw how the dough responded as she gently drew it from the center out, she grew bolder.
    “Mama,” Claudia exclaimed just as Sylvia saw what she had done. “Sylvia tore a hole.”
    Mortified, Sylvia pulled her hands free of the dough and allowed it to fall to the table. A three-inch maw in the dough glared up at her.
    “That’s all right,” said Eleanor, hurrying over. “It’s easily mended.” She gently pinched the tear closed and smiled reassuringly at Sylvia, but the seam was too visible and she knew she had ruined the strudel.
    “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said. What would the aunts say when they found out?
    “Don’t worry, darling,” said Eleanor. “I imagine even Gerda Bergstrom tore the dough from time to time. When your grandmother first taught me to make it, I tore the dough so many times that it looked like a sweater the moths had found. We patched every hole and the strudel was still delicious, and I’m sure this one will be, too.”
    Sylvia felt better, but Claudia shook her head in silent disgust. Leave it to the careless little sister to ruin the Bergstrom reputation, her look seemed to say.
    Eleanor urged her daughters back to the task. Sylvia obeyed, but more cautiously this time. Gradually the dough grew longer and wider until it was nearly translucent. Eventually the dough stretched to the edges of the table, impossibly thin. Their mother circled the table one last time, trimming off the thicker edges with a knife. She set the scraps aside—she would make soup noodles with them later—and beckoned for Sylvia to bring her the apple slices. While Sylvia held the bowl, Eleanor scooped out the apples and lined one long edge of the dough from one end of the table to the other, piling up the slices in the shape of a log.
    When she had finished, Eleanor set the empty bowl on the counter, her face flushed. Worried, Sylvia watched her while she held on to the back of a chair to rest, but she paused only a moment. Then, starting at one end, she carefully folded the dough over the apples until they could not be seen. “This is where teamwork is essential,