Uptown Quiltropolis

Here in Quiltropolis (Winterset), we call the commercial area Uptown. (Not downtown.)

Uptown includes the shops around the square, the buildings and businesses on the blocks just off the square, and of course the Madison County Courthouse, right there in the middle of everything.

Madison County’s courthouse was built in 1876. The limestone structure replaced a previous one that had burned to the ground.

Uptown Winterset figures strongly in my debut novel, The Dressmaker of Winterset, in print next year on April 6, so it was great to spend a recent Saturday on the south portico of our courthouse, imagining, from time to time, the Uptown of the mid-1950s.

I was there with a stack of quilts, displaying them to visitors who came to town for the Iowa Quilt Museum’s annual Airing of the Quilts.

All day, I turned a half a dozen of my quilts, displayed on a bed, and told the stories behind them.

The Dressmaker of Winterset uses Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as a jumping off place, but my narrative takes place in twentieth-century Methodist Winterset, not seventeenth-century Puritan Boston. I borrowed Hawthorne’s four principal characters—Hester, Arthur, Roger, and Pearl—but populated 1956 Winterset with dozens more I made up in my brain, some of them inspired by people who once lived here.

Hester Prynne, the heroine of THE SCARLET LETTER, is required to wear an A (for Adultery) on her bodice for the rest of her life. A big fan of the novel, a few years ago I hand appliquéd a scarlet A to a dramatic dark background. (10 x 12 inches, 100% cotton)

My Hester, like the Hester of The Scarlet Letter, gives birth to a child whose father is not her husband.

About one hundred pages in, on Christmas Eve 1957, Hester, asleep in the little house on East Jefferson where she lives, dreams of Uptown.

In her dream, she floated up into the night sky above the cottage and hovered there, watching snow pile up on the shingles. Delighted with her power of flight, she floated west, toward the square. At First Methodist, she rose high enough to gaze down at the thick blanket of white on the church’s roof. Suddenly, she had X-ray vision, too. Through the snow, through the roof, she could see the sanctuary waiting for its worshippers, the cross on the altar, the pulpit and the lectern, the hymnals in the pews. She floated across the street and looked down at Arthur lying in his bed, his covers twisted, his hair disheveled and dark against the white pillowcase.

On and on she floated, past City Hall, to the square, to the courthouse itself, and like a threaded needle wove through the columns of each portico, her flannel nightgown flowing along her body, her hair unpinned and flowing, too. She rose higher, past the second floor, up to the courthouse dome, where snow filled the rims of the giant, backlit clocks facing north, south, east, and west, keeping Winterset’s time. From the silver cupola at the very top, she could see the entire square, and beyond it the darkened houses and tree-lined streets of the town, all the way out to the country, where yard lights on farms glittered in the snow. Within her womb, her baby stirred.

The quilt on the left is called Checkboxes . . . on the right, Cubbyholes. I was lucky to be able to stand in the shade the day of the Airing, as temperatures rose into the 80s.

We display quilts all over town the day of The Airing . . . at the library, the elementary school, in shop windows around the square, and on front porches on residential streets. We set up beds on all four courthouse porticos, north, south, east, and west. Four invited quilt makers stack their quilts and show them to visitors who climb the steps to listen.

Clockwise from top left: Flower Bed, Schoolhouse, Streak o' Lightning Split Nine patch, and Texas Log Cabin.

All day, I took the opportunity to tell my visitors about The Dressmaker, handing out lots of the little promotional cards a local friend who owns an uptown business printed for me.

One of my visitors took my little card home with her and gave it to the program chair of her quilt guild. I’m going there to lecture and sign books at a meeting sometime next year.

Julie Gammack is the heart and soul of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, to which I proudly belong. She’s also the founder of the wonderful Okoboji Writers and Songwriters Retreat held every September at Lake Okoboji. Please check it out and consider joining us. I’ll be there and can’t wait!