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said.
    “Shows you what people can do without a lot of money,” he replied.
    “Now that’s a fact,” Helen said. “Just about anybody could find enough wood to put one of these together. Primitive, maybe, but it gets the job done. My mama made dozens of quilts on a frame like this one.”
    Peony and Cathy positioned the sawhorses so they were set farther apart than the finished quilt; then, carefully, Kate and Noah placed one of the poles into the square notches, where it snuggled perfectly. Peony and Cathy began to roll the other side of the quilt around the second pole, until they had it as tight as they wanted it. Then they dropped that one in the second notch.
    “What are they doing now?” Noah asked Helen as the women wound folded muslin strips in and out of the sawhorse and along the side, pinning them along the other two edges of the quilt.
    “That’ll keep it nice and tight while we quilt. You don’t pay attention to that and to keeping it straight, your quilt’ll make you seasick, all wavy edges. Now, a new frame, wouldn’t be no need for all this fussing. But this is the old way, when women quilted together whenever they could grab the time.”
    Now that the quilt was tight on the frame, Noah bent over it, examining the multiple stars that were still in view.
    “This is something else,” he said. “Look at all those diamonds.”
    “You like quilts?” Peony asked, straightening from her stint at wrapping and pinning the muslin.
    “We have enough around here, I guess.”
    “Never enough. And once we’re done, you’ll have another one.” Helen wandered over to the wall and stared at a series of framed objects. “Well, will you look at these?”
    Gayle followed. “They’re pieces of an old quilt from the homestead across the river. My neighbor, Travis Allen, gave them to me. Said they belonged over here with all my other quilts.”
    “How’d he come by them?”
    “Back in the days when the Allens still owned the property, the house was collapsing. A couple of times hunters used the remaining shell for shelter and started campfires inside, and the roof was caving in. Travis’s father decided he had to finish the job or worry about a lawsuit. There wasn’t much there, but he saved what he could. He found the quilt in an old chest. The rest of it more or less disintegrated when he picked it up, but he was able to salvage these scraps. Travis gave them to me when he came home to stay.”
    Helen leaned closer to examine one piece. The section of quilt was about nine inches by eleven, matted on black. The colors were faded, but greens and golds were still discernible. “It’s probably a piece of a star, the tip of one arm.” She pointed to another piece of what looked like plain muslin, which was now a pale, splotchy blue. “And that was probably the center, where all the arms come together.”
    “That’s what I thought, too. I had a professional frame them to protect them as much as we could. But I didn’t want to tuck the scraps in a drawer. I wanted people to enjoy them before they turn to dust.”
    “You notice some of the fabrics we used in your quilt look like these? Most likely this was a real Civil War quilt. About that time, anyway. Not much to look at now, but it might have been a real beauty all those years ago.”
    Noah joined them. “Are you going to teach people how to quilt while you’re here?”
    “Anybody who wants a try at it’s welcome.”
    “Noah can sew,” Gayle said. “All my boys had to learn. I don’t have time to do their mending. Or the talent.”
    “I’ve seen some fine quilts made by men,” Helen told Noah. “It’s an art form like any. You want to give it a try, I’ll be glad to teach you.”
    “You’d better watch out, son,” a voice said from the doorway. “If you get too good with a needle, some people are going to question your masculinity.”
    Gayle knew Eric’s remark was meant as a joke. She turned to beckon Eric, clad in gray sweats,