A quilt is more than pieces of fabric sewn together. It is also a collection of memories stitched together with love. Giving a quilt as a gift passes on the shared memories, said a woman who regularly gives prairie-made quilts as presents to women in northern Canadian communities.
AnnE Zimmerman, with On Eagle’s Wings, a Christian organization that travels throughout Alaska and northern Canada helping train community leaders, said a brightly coloured quilt is like sunshine coming to a community in dark winter months.
“To get a quilt is quite an exciting event,” Zimmerman told the Alberta Women’s Institutes annual meeting.
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A quilt is symbolic of togetherness. When women gather to make a quilt, they talk about the colours and fabrics that would blend. They discuss the stitches that hold it together, and as the project grows, women share their stories while the others stitch and listen.
“When we share together as women, it’s not about changing each other, it’s about accepting a woman the way she is, saying you are worthy of my full attention,” said Zimmerman, who has learned to listen to tragic stories from women in northern Canada.
One woman in Gris Fjord, Canada’s most northerly community, told Zimmerman how they were relocated to the area by the federal government at the beginning of winter with only tents and a few supplies. When the woman went outside to chip ice for water, she realized she was chipping rock. A few months later her child was born with mental disabilities that the woman blames on the atrocious conditions when the community was established.
“I learned what it meant to listen and to be quiet as she shared her story. She was sharing her story with me because we were friends, not because she wanted me to feel sorry for her.”
Giving a quilt is another way of sharing stories and making connections with other women. Zimmerman said she brought a quilt to a woman in a northern palliative care home. Through a translator the woman said she didn’t know she had so many friends who cared to make her a quilt.
“The women who made the quilt will never meet her but the connection is there.”
Other women’s organizations, including some branches of the AWI, sew cloth bags for children to decorate and carry their crafts in during Bible study classes. One boy was shocked that he got to keep the bag.
“You’ll never meet that little boy, but it’s a connection,” she said.
“A quilt definitely tells a story. A bag definitely tells a story.”
