If you’d asked Ange where her Christmas spirit had gone, she’d reply with a twinkle that it was locked away with the other bottles in her cocktail cabinet. Yet, behind the twinkle was a sadness that she rarely let escape.
If you met her, you’d see a vivacious woman, with a personality that matched her bright teal highlights. Whenever the Quilting guild met, Ange would swish into the room with her sparkly doc martens and her oversized smock and set about cheering everyone up.
She was known for her wonky seams and her lack of coordinating fabrics. It wasn’t that she was going for crazy quilts but somehow they all ended up as labours of love that weren’t particularly easy on the eye. She had previously gifted them to family but had rather lost heart when she went to visit her sister and found her teenage nephew Jake toilet training their new puppy on last year’s Christmas quilt.
After that she started to store them away. Marie her sewing buddy often told her that the sewing WAS the therapy and beauty was in the eye of the beholder. The other guild members were always polite and encouraging but never gushed at her makes like they did when little miss Penny Perfect brought in her latest offering.
It used to get her down, but Ange knew that she was rescuing the unwanted fabrics one by one and giving them a second chance. Goodness, if she could have sewn in potato sacks and Jiffy bags to her quilts, she’d have done that too.
Ange’s skills seemed to lie in the way that she made others feel. If you were new to sewing, you’d go away feeling like you could conquer the next tricky block more easily. Once, her friend Orinoco had brought a friend to a guild show and tell evening, he’d reportedly thought it was a sing-along rerun of The Greatest Showman but by the end, even Paul had sat down and sewed his very first set of squares with the expert guidance and supreme encouragement of Ange.
Some of the sewing posse gave Ange the distinct impression that she wasn’t really up to par. Maybe she was being paranoid, but even Sue couldn’t persuade Ange to ever enter her quilts at local quilt shows. She was afraid she’d let the side down, so was happier entertaining the visitors on Quilt Exhibition days and pouring copious cups of tea. However her baking prowess wasn’t up for debate. Perfect Penny couldn’t hold a torch to Ange’s Carrot Cake (even if it was a complete copy of the Hummingbird Bakery’s recipe).
A blossoming pile of completed quilts was keeping her airing cupboard warm. Occasionally Ange would swap out her lounge quilt for one in the pile, but the hoard continued to grow. Her guild regularly sewed for a local charity and yet Ange felt that she couldn’t give them away, they just weren’t good enough.
It was heading toward Christmas and Ange cast her eyes down the ever growing list of things to do. She was throwing a cookie swap event for the first time, but at this time of year her thoughts turned to family and the sister she’d lost touch with many years ago. She wiped a tear from her eye and another dropped onto her faded quilt. She smiled at the memory of her little brown haired sibling and patted her collection of cookie recipes.
Her phone rang and she spluttered as head honcho Pam was on the other end of the phone.
‘Ange, we wondered if you could help us out?’
Ange rolled her eyes. Was it collecting for the tombola again, or organising the sewing secret Santa?
Pam cleared her throat, ‘you’ve seen all the trouble in Ukraine? Well there’s a group of women and children just arrived into our town and we’ve been asked do we have any bedding for them. New is preferable. ‘
Ange eyes mentally drifted up towards her airing cupboard.
‘Does it matter what it looks like?’ she asked Pam falteringly.
‘Goodness no. I can’t imagine it would. I’m sure they’d be glad of anything they can call their own. Some of the families just need help to get started’.
Ange took down the details of the address to take the bedding to and after saying goodbye to Pam she found herself sitting next to the airing cupboard wondering if this was the time to say farewell to her quilts.
She knew that if she dithered, then procrastination would win and she’d never give them away. She wrestled the piles out of their shelves and after piling them into her bijou rusting Mini, she nervously set off to the community centre. She arrived and was ushered into a bustling hall. Penny was there with her slightly dry scones but before Ange could be internally mean she found the organiser and asked nervously if her quilts would be of use.
Tim looked at her piles of lovingly sewn fabric and was completely amazed. ‘They’re perfect’ he gushed. ‘Would you mind giving them out to those families over there’.
As Ange started to place them onto a table, a little girl ran over and began to tug at the corner of one of them. Ange smiled at her and her embarrassed mother rushed over and tried to apologise for her daughter. Tim came over and with the help of a translator, Ange learned that they hadn’t been in Presswell for long and were looking for some items to use in their temporary accommodation. The little girl continued to pull at the quilt, so Ange dragged it from the middle of the quilt tower. The girl beamed as she showed her Mum the sunflower pattern on the chevrons. Ange had never noticed them on the fabric before, but as Tim talked to Oksana her Mum, Ange remembered that it was their National flower.
They left to get a meal, but then the little girl ran back. She grabbed Ange’s legs and squeezed them together as she hugged her. As Ange patted her head, her Mum called her. ‘Anna’.
Anna looked up at Ange and their eyes met. They didn’t need to understand each other’s language, there was a wonderful moment of connection. She drew a sharp intake of breath as this little brunette with two straggly bunches staring up at her with wide eyes could easily have been her sister Anna before she left all those years ago.
Ange turned away, fighting back tears that were stinging her eyes. A little later, from a distance, she could see Anna, eating a chocolate digestive, with her sunflower quilt wrapped tightly around her.
Her quilts finally had a home. They would be just as loved as any quilt could be and Ange knew that they would be treasured.
Later that month, on Christmas Eve, Ange looked out at the twinkling town, festooned with lights and festive foliage and wondered where Anna and Oksana had ended up.
In the New year, she determined she’d fill up that airing cupboard once again, but she wouldn’t care whether they were good enough as that wasn’t the important thing…and she decided that she’d also stop taking herself so seriously. Most importantly, she promised herself that this was the year that she’d finally track down her own lost Anna. She lifted her glass of Baileys to the window, toasted her sister silently and found her Christmas spirit once more.
What a lovely story Keren, pleased there was a happy ending.
Lovely x