Helen Kelley | loose threads

    I'm
    Calling
    You

I have a cell phone. Bill calls me on it when he stops at the grocery store to ask what I need, or he calls me to let me know when he's on his way home from a late meeting. It's an easy way to communicate. It saves me worry, and I enjoy the convenience and the immediacy of it.

Having this means of communication so close at hand reminds me of the pulley network my neighborhood girlfriends and I rigged up when we were in the sixth grade. I had a string tied around the metal handle on my bedroom window. The string went out over the roof of the porch next door, wrapped around my friend Suey's window handle, and came back again to my house. It had been quite a feat to put up this arrangement. We tied one end of the string to a rock, and Suey, standing in the garden below, threw the rock up in the air again and again until I, leaning out my upstairs window, caught it. We tied the two ends of the string together to complete the loop. Then we could attach paper notes to the string and pull it until the notes moved from one window to the other across the space between our houses. We waved to each other and read the important, secret messages. We could have shouted them to each other, but that would have been no fun at all.

Eventually, that pulley system went all over the neighborhood. One string went to Pricilla's and one to Betsy's and one to Betty's. Betty's leg of the journey was difficult because she lived across the road, and the string sagged and kept getting caught on passing busses.

Helen Kelley is a quiltmaker, lecturer, author, and teacher from Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can visit Helen on the Internet at her website www.helenkelley- patchworks.com or email Helen at this address: helen@helenkelley- patchworks.com.

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Every week when I go off to stitch with my Needleworkers, I look forward to the morning as much for the pleasure of sewing as for the joy of sharing. Just as we neighborhood girls laughed when we shared secret notes, we quilters laugh together, too. We share little familiarities and the satisfaction of being friends.

We recently had a new member join us. Lucy, a lady from Africa, came to our group because she hoped she could improve her English by listening to us talk. I asked her slowly and distinctly if she understood what we were all saying. She laughed and replied, "I do not understand a word anybody says." She was bewildered by our inside jokes and our Americanisms. But now, after she has joined us week after week to stitch bindings on her quilts and to listen to our repartee, her English is improving. She can follow our chatter. She is part of the current of our lives.

That's exactly what a quilting bee is. It's a time when quilters plug in to the currents of the lives of those around them and become part of those currents. Maybe this is the most important part of quilting.

When others see quilters sitting together, do you suppose that all they see is a group of people sewing? Do other people understand that we are sharing something more than needles and thread, that we are sharing ideas and concerns and affections? The bond among women who sew together is strong. Although Lucy still says very little as she stitches, she smiles, and sometimes she even laughs. We know that as she binds another side of her quilt, she understands about our children and about our new recipes and about our sick pets. As she shifts in her chair and turns the quilt to the next edge, she laughs with us. Lucy is on our wavelength.

As a child, I felt secure in that loop of pulley strings and friendships. As a grown woman, I feel secure in this circle of quilters as we share our lives.

©HK 2006