"Hi, Harriet,” she said. “I need Mavis to remake Carlton 's vest. She dropped it off this morning, way too early, I might add. Anyway, there must have been some mistake.” She pulled a wool vest out of the paper bag she was carrying. “It's all dull and gray.” She held it with two fingers as if it were contaminated then dropped it on a wingback chair. “This won't do. She needs to make another one out of a brighter fabric, something to match my dress."

"What color is your dress?” Harriet asked, afraid to hear the answer.

"Why, pink, of course. I had a dressmaker in Seattle make it."

"Men didn't wear pink in Civil War times,” Connie said.

"We don't know that. No one knows what every single person wore back then. I'm sure there was a man somewhere who wore a pink vest, and Carlton is going to be like that man."

"Well, Mavis went to Portland, so I'm afraid you're out of luck,” Connie said.

"Am I still out of luck if I'm willing to pay you three times what Mavis charged for this thing?” Bebe asked.

"Make it four times, and you have a deal,” Connie said, knowing Mavis had charged a premium price for the first one and afraid of what Bebe might come up with if she didn't make it. She picked up the gray vest. “Did this one fit?"

"I'm sure it would have-Mavis is very thorough. But you already know that.” Bebe pivoted on her pink patent leather heels and left as quickly as she'd come, her mission successfully accomplished.

"I can't believe you just agreed to make a new vest for Carlton when Mavis already made a perfectly good one."

"You need to learn to pick your battles, mija. Bebe is very young. Her world vision stops at the mirror in front of her. Some people are slow bloomers. Our Bebe is still a child. Besides, it won't take me any time at all, and I can always use more mad money."

"You're a nicer person than I am,” Harriet said.

"Meow,” came a muffled complaint from the other side of the connecting door. The sound was repeated after a few moments, this time louder and more insistent.

"Okay, Fred,” Harriet called out. “I'll be there in a sec."

DeAnn and Robin had dropped off two quilt tops they had made up at the last minute. They were to be lap-sized quilts, and the women had devised a scheme to sew the two tops together and use one big backing piece so they could be quilted as if they were a single big quilt. It was a clever plan and allowed Harriet to do one set-up instead of two. The pattern was the crosses and losses block, a design that used half-square triangle pieces along with solid squares of the same size as well as larger triangles.

Half-square triangles are made by stacking two layers of fabric, right sides together, and then cutting the resulting sandwich into a square, which is then stitched together on the diagonal with two lines of stitching placed a half-inch apart. When the unit between the two stitching lines is cut apart, the result is two squares each comprised of two different-colored triangles.

Several paper and fabric systems have been invented that allow a stitcher to lay two large pieces of fabric together then place a paper guide on top. The quilter stitches a continuous intertwined zigzag line following the printed guide then cuts along another guideline. The result is a lot of perfectly sized half-square triangles with much less effort. The latest twist on the guide system is to make it out of a very lightweight material that is permanently heat-fused onto the reverse side of one of the fabrics, eliminating the need to remove paper guide pieces.

Being reasonable women, they had chosen a simple feather pattern for the quilt stitching. The feathers would adequately anchor their quilt top to the backing without making Harriet go to undue trouble.

Fred meowed again, so Harriet opened the connecting door and let him come into the studio and weave between her legs while she shut down her machine. He had been banished to the kitchen several hours earlier when he had tired of their quilting project and started amusing himself by swatting her ankles.

"I suppose you're hungry again,” she said, knowing the answer before she even asked. “You do know it was Aiden who put you on the hypo-allergenic cat food, not me. If you want to take it out on someone-"

"Hey, Fred,” Aiden said as he came in from the studio.

"Don't you ever knock?"

"Don't you ever lock your door? Besides, if I had knocked I wouldn't have heard you bad-mouthing me to Fred here.” He crossed the room and pulled Harriet into his arms, kissing her soundly on the mouth. “And no matter what the cat says, he has to stay on that food if you want his skin to clear up. Speaking of food, want to go find some? I have to go back to work for a meeting, but we're having a dinner break first."

"Would we have time to go by the battlefield before we eat? I'd like to take one last walk-through before the advance group starts arriving tomorrow morning."

Harriet had encouraged Carlton to pay a small group of experienced re-enactors from the Portland area to come several days before the main event to check out the battlefield, tent camps and sutler area to make sure they hadn't overlooked anything. Several of the women were quilters, and she had invited them to join the Loose Threads as they finished up their projects.

"I think that could be arranged,” he said. “Let me call Jorge and see if he can start our dinners while we walk."

Jorge Perez owned a Mexican restaurant in downtown Foggy Point called Tico's Tacos. He had stepped in as a father figure after Aiden's own father had died when he was in grade school. Jorge's son Julio, an environmental lawyer in Seattle, was Aiden's best friend.

Aiden made the call from his cell phone as they drove down the hill, through downtown Foggy Point and on to Fogg Park, where the re-enactment would take place. Large areas of the park were barred to the public and had been sectioned off with yellow tape. Private security guards patrolled the perimeter to insure the fence segments, movable bushes and other props needed for the battles wouldn't be disturbed. As a result, the parking lot was nearly empty.

Aiden parked his vintage Ford Bronco at the curb, and they got out. The air was warm, and heavy with the scent of pine. Summer days in Foggy Point didn't often go higher than the upper seventies or low eighties. Harriet hoped their guests from warmer climates would be prepared for the cooler summer weather the locals enjoyed.

"What if no one comes?” she asked in a small voice when they had reached the middle of the battlefield.

"The City of Foggy Point would be stuck with a big tab and they would probably run you out of town on a rail,” Aiden said in a somber voice.

Harriet looked stricken for a moment before she looked up and realized he was teasing her, at which point she hit his arm.

"You're not helping."

"You're being silly,” he countered. “You have a zillion people signed up to attend the various events, you know all the hotel rooms in town have been reserved and the B-and-Bs are full. You also have two camps full of participants who have already paid to rent tents and tent spaces. It would take a full-scale disaster for this to be anything but a smashing success."

"I suppose. I've just never been in charge of an event of this size before."

"Well, you better get ready to do more. This is going to be a huge success, and then every fundraising committee in town is going to want your magic touch."

"Well, they're not getting it. This has been way too stressful. I'll need a vacation when this is over."

"No problem. I'll run away with you and we'll lie on some exotic beach till your stress goes away."

"Yeah,” she said. “I'm sure you would. We both know you don't have any vacation days yet."