Museum features quilting bee, book launch

February 5, 2014 · 0 Comments

If you’re in need of a quilt these days, you would likely head to a local bedding retailer, make a choice, pay with debit, credit or cash, and think no more of it.

If you had lived in rural Canada as a 19th century settler, or even in the 1930s, you’d have had a hard time finding a bedding retailer and, even then, you wouldn’t have had a debit or credit card and you might not have had enough cash on hand to make a purchase.

So, if you needed a quilt you made your own, and you might have derived pleasure from doing so as your neighbours would come to lend a hand. Together, you would have a “quilting bee” which would serve as both a productive and a social event.

Those old times are going to be on display at Dufferin County Museum next Wednesday, Feb. 12, at 1 p.m. along with the launch of a history book about quilting in Dufferin, and an actual quilting bee.

There’ll be snacks and refreshments available.

Author Shelagh Roberts will be there to talk about the book. Steve Brown at the museum says it will be a worthwhile historical presentation. The book is based on the confirmed history of the 200-plus quilts in the museum’s collection, and is replete with photos of the collection.

Nanci Malek, organizer of the event along with quilter Doreen Riggin, says in a publicity notice that: “Each quilt in the collection of the Dufferin County Museum and Archives has its own story to tell.

“We have learned that quilts are documents of social history, among other things, they are a reflection of the economic times in which they were created. Quilts followed fashions, and were the victims of fads. The best are both artful and skillful.

“They are a testament to the quilters, the quilters’ families and the communities which produced them.”

Steve says the chapters of the book are broken into eras, and there are the stories of each quilt that is displayed, beginning perhaps with an East Garafraxa quilt from 1826. He says quilting has gone “in and out of fashion” in recent years. Now there are three quilting guilds in Dufferin.

The best-known of those, Dufferin Piecemakers, meets monthly at Orangeville Fair Grounds in Mono.

Steve says some quilters provide custom service, and at least one uses quilt making as a fundraising event on occasion. One such apparently meets at Westminster United Church in Orangeville.

By Wes Keller