Mrs. Miller

The title of this blog comes from a conversation I had with Frieda Miller, an 80 year old resident of Tantallon who had not worked on the quilt but knew some of the Homemakers. She has seen the quilt when it was first made, and remembered that although the ladies were proud of it, it wasn't seen as anything special. She said it was just something that was done - that living in a small community meant caring for your neighbours. She said "It was like you were one with them."

I loved that line and made a small quiltlike sculpture featuring those words. (Yes, I have a picture of it somewhere.) I have the same feeling living on Lasqueti, and Mrs. Miller's apt description has become the guiding principle of this blog.

The Quilt

I may be eliminating some drama and anticipation, but here is the pieced top. I will probably go back and do some staged photos of the individual makers working on their square, but alas, my brain didn't click in to the potential of this project until I was given the basket of finished squares to piece.

My own contribution is the Mariner's Compass in the centre. How did I manage that, being the johnny-come-lately to this group of sewers? Well, at the last minute, the ladies decided that the quilt should have a star in it. (Haha, that sounds funny - they meant a fabric star shape, not a celebrity, which I am assuredly not.) I volunteered and downloaded a paper foundation for the compass, merrily sewing along until I was was halfway through and realized to my horror that it was twice as big as it should have been. (All squares are 12"). I finished the thing, 'cause that's what I do, and thought it could perhaps be used for a pillow.

But when I sheepishly showed it to the group, they wanted to use it for the quilt. Which meant a juggling operation and a major revision to the planned layout. The half panel ABC and 123 were chosen because Pat was an elementary school teacher for many years and in her own words, teaching was her proudest accomplishment. Her friend Charlotte, also a former teacher, appliqued the felt letters and numbers the night before leaving for a three month trip to southern sunshine.

It All Began in Tantallon, SK

In 1993 I was asked by the curator of Regina's Dunlop Gallery to enter into a collaborative relationship with a quilt from their permanent collection. The quilt had been made 55 years earlier by the women of the tiny town of Tantallon, located in southeast Saskatchewan. It was a charming piece, each square delightfully embroidered with a rendering of the maker's home or one of the notable buildings in the town. It had been presented to the wife of a departing church minister, and apparently never used, but stored carefully in a trunk before donation to the gallery.

It had been made by the Tantallon Homemakers Club. All the documentation the gallery had was a partial list of the makers. Mrs. George Ormiston. Mrs. Fred Brown. Mrs. Paynter. There was a contact number for one of the women's daughters. And that was it.

The story goes on - I did lots of research to discover the full names of the makers, culminating in a gallery exhibition featuring the Tantallon quilt and my own creative response to it. The show was reviewed and received a fair bit of attention from the media. An article about it was published in The Craft Factor magazine and re-printed in Craft, Perception and Practice, Volume II.

What was incredible to me was that on the day of the opening, a bitterly cold prairie winter day, carloads of the descendants of the Homemakers traveled for two or three hours to come see the quilt. People wanted to have their picture taken with it; buttonholed me to tell me stories of their mother or their aunt who had worked on it; reminisced about the town and the old buildings that were no longer standing, but preserved in the pastel threads of the quilt. It was clear that this quilt was very meaningful to these people, but it also garnered a powerful response from people of 12 other Saskatchewan towns to which the exhibition eventually toured.

The story contained in the quilt, and my contribution of honouring the makers by "signing" it, evoked many emotions and memories of a period in history which was only half a century past. Still, given a few more years of languishing in an acid-free tissue lined drawer in a temperature and humidity controlled room, and that quilt could have been totally cut off from the people who made it and the community that had fostered it. It would have been simply a charming artifact of simpler times.

All of this is a rather long winded introduction to my current project. I have been asked to participate in making a quilt honouring one of this island's matriarchs who has just celebrated her 80th birthday. Many of the women (and one man) of this community have contributed a square, either embroidered or pieced, with an image that connects them to Pat. As Pat has lived here all her life, this quilt is also a history of this place.

I'm not going to let what almost happened to the Tantallon quilt happen to this one. I will be assiduously documenting each aspect of the making of this quilt and the people involved. What I hope will emerge will be a story in cloth and a story in words of a very unique, eccentric and beautiful island perched on the north west edge of North America.

(I know you would love to see pictures but the Tantallon quilt files are tucked away in another computer. I will try to make them available as soon as I can.)