Autumn Shadow wishes to include Stone Creek Woman along with the other historically recognized Native American women in her storytelling curricula.

     To facilitate the young Indian girls on the reservation with the memory of Stone Creek Woman, she borrows a time-honored craft, and reintroduces the old-fashioned quilting bee, a recreational sister to the spelling bee.

     She crafts a wooden frame with light-weight folding legs.  The frame is lashed together with tobacco twine and cotton ropes, so the entire quilting framework can be conveniently hoisted off the one-room schoolhouse floor by lifting it up with a rope attached to each corner of the frame threaded through a hook in the ceiling.

     This clever device makes it easy to allow the girls to simply pull up a folding chair, and begin stitching the coverlet already stored in place, when the slate boards are erased of the day's lessons, which Autumn Shadow teaches the old-fashioned way by reintroducing the 3 R's complete with a bell sounded by pulling a rope to announce school's start and finish each day, and basic nostalgic accessories consisting of personal slate boards, chalk, abacuses, inkwells, turkey-feather quill pens, oak desks with attached seats equipped with lift-up storage tops, graduated in sizes according to grade level, and a pot-bellied stove to warm the knowledge to serve up the lessons.

     Autumn Shadow tells the story of Stone Creek Woman several times to allow the girls adequate time to absorb the healing wisdom.  The philosophies, therapies, and ceremonies are cut out of cloth as appliques to be stitched on each colored square of the quilt top.  Stone Creek Woman's story will be preserved, and told to others by reading the quilt.

     Stone Creek Woman's clock garden appears to be the favorite theme, which is sewn into the center of the quilt with twelve different wedge-shaped flower appliques warmed by a bright sun in the middle, but what really makes the quilt tick is the personal, unselfish time which Autumn Shadow lends to record a story quilt to heal.  Imagine amber wolves, purple porcupines, rainbow birds, jade lllamas, tangerine drums, chartreuse feathers, vermilion panthers, copper moons, fuchsia foxes, mallard tipis, and hummingbirds made of bright calico fabrics.

     When a knowledgeable old person dies, a whole library disappears if it is not kindly passed on.  Can a woman afford to pass over this knowledge?

Coppyright 2005 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist