Cathedral Window Quilt

Cathedral Window Quilt by Colleen Anderson Last week when Andrew Thompson tried to kill his whole family, including himself, I was up at Birdie's place, learning to make a Cathedral Window quilt. The Cathedral Window, which is technically not a quilt at all, is hard to explain in words; you almost have to have a set of pictures or, better yet, somebody to sit you down and show you, which is what Birdie was doing with me. The way Andrew tried to kill everybody was like this: He and Doreen were having a big fight. Neither one of them remembers what the fight was about, but Andrew was drinking. When he started hitting on Doreen, she took the two kids, Crystal Ann and Andrew Junior, shut herself up in the bedroom, and pushed the head of the bed against the door. Then she and Crystal Ann and little Andrew sat at the foot of the bed and dug their heels into the rug. Andrew banged on the door hard enough to shake the bed, but he couldn't get inside, and when Crystal Ann said, "Go away, Daddy," he went for the gasoline. He siphoned it out ofmy car. That's how I got involved in this mess. I know I shouldn't feel responsible, but I keep thinking that if only I had bought that locking gas cap, like Harry Pauley said I should, there wouldn't have been any fire, and Doreen and Crystal Ann and little Andrew would still have a place to live. If only I had driven up to Birdie's, instead of walking—but Andrew could have gotten the gas from anybody's car. I keep telling myself that, too, but I feel bad—I must, or I wouldn't be sitting in this hospital lobby, waiting for Doreen. At least I have something to do. The Cathedral Window is just right for waiting. Once you have the fabric cut and ironed, you can carry a week's worth of stitching in the side pocket of your purse. You have to cut the squares and iron them at home first, though. You start with a seven-inch-square piece of unbleached muslin. I have seen Cathedral Window quilts made ofbleached muslin, but they were mistakes, in my opinion. Then, you need a piece of cardboard , exactly six inches square. Put the muslin down on the ironing board, lay the cardboard square right in the center, and turn up the raw edges with the iron. It's close work, and you have to use a hot iron—you want that crease to stay put. That's about all you need to get started, the muslin squares with all four edges turned up, a needle, and some offwhite thread. The different calico prints come later. After Andrew got the gas from my car, he came back in the house and drank some more. Doreen said he yelled at all of them for at least half an hour, about how he was going to make them sorry, and she could tell by the way his 55 voice sounded that he was stretched out on the red vinyl sofa getting drunker by the minute. That sofa was Doreen's favorite piece of furniture, and she was broken up that it got destroyed in the fire. That's one of the many ways Doreen and I are different. How she could even think about a sofa, under the circumstances, I can't figure; besides, I always thought it looked like a big, fat, sunburned body with stretch marks. Anyway, Doreen liked the sofa, and she started thinking that Andrew would probably drop a cigarette on it, in his drunken state, and burn a hole in it. She was scared of him—he was a mean drunk for such a small man—but from inside the bedroom she yelled back at Andrew. "That sofa," she told him, "is the only piece of store-bought furniture I have ever owned in my whole life. You hear me, Andrew Thompson? You better not burn a hole in that sofa!" Well, Andrew started laughing like a crazy man then. At first Doreen...