Learning and Doing

The Learner's Quilt
by Freda MacdonaldRachel was raised in rural Cape Breton in the late 1800s in the area of East Lake Ainslie. Like most of our Guild members, she was a keen weaver whose interest was founded in time spent processing wool from fleeces harvested on her father's prosperous farm.

At a very early age Rachel's mother, grandmother and aunts put her and her sisters to work picking straw and seeds from washed wool. She went on to learn how to card and spin wool for woven household stuff used to make garments, or yarn for knitted clothing.

Rachel's mother was an accomplished seamstress and taught Rachel how to read and follow patterns to make aprons, dresses, nightgowns, and more. Patterns were a recent innovation for women who wanted to follow the latest fashions but had limited access to the ready-to-wear goods found in the cities and towns.

In a household that boasted many intelligent women, Rachel was kept busy, especially in winter, learning to use yarns, threads and fabrics in a variety of arts and crafts. However, on the rare occasions when Catherine MacIsaac, an itinerant weaver, would come to weave larger and more fancy goods like coverlets for the Campbell household, Rachel's imagination was fired and her passion for all manner of weaving was born.

Hope Chest

The Hope Chest with a collection of weaving, quilting and rug hooking. The box was made of local larch by Paul Smith for his wife Leslie.

On Rachel's 15th birthday her grandfather gave her a gift of a beautiful blanket box. He had spent some time in the waning light of winter afternoons working in a small heated shed, planing, sawing and fitting the wood into a very useful piece of furniture intended for her future home. We're calling this a 'Hope Chest' although the term did not find its way into Webster's Dictionary until 1911. It was also referred to as a bridal box or often simply 'her trunk.' Rachel's great-grandmother might have brought such a chest or trunk with her from Rum when she traveled to Canso in 1828.

Much of what went into Rachel's trunk came from family, friends and neighbours. They were thoughtful gifts of new, or often used items, marking special occasions or acknowledging favours done and intended for Rachel's use after marriage.

There are many items in the hope chest that reflect the handiwork of Rachel, her family and friends. You'll find a wide range of techniques and skill levels. There are beginner pieces in weaving, quilting, and embroidery. Rachel's own work at the loom filled this box and more with both functional and decorative items. It was often so that a young girl had time to spend on fine work for her 'trunk' but didn't follow this up after marriage. She would be too busy with her house and children.

While some fancy work is included, for the most part these pieces are practical in style, form and colour. In 1901 we would not often find someone making lace or fancy needlework. Rachel's friend Cheryl learned to tat from her grandmother in Newfoundland, but she was one of the rare ones. In this rural community skills tended toward the utilitarian, weaving, knitting, quilting and these are the same skills that survived the century.

Styles and fashion

In 1901 Queen Victoria had been succeeded by her son, Edward VII, Marconi had received the first Trans-Atlantic wireless message at St. John's Newfoundland and Alexander Graham Bell was experimenting with airplanes, kites and hydrofoils in Baddeck.

Closer to home, on December 13, 1901, the first through car from Broad Cove, Inverness County, went out over the Inverness and Richmond Railway. Completion of the track between Hastings and Tupper gave through train service from Sydney to Broad Cove. Though Rachel went most places on horseback, she could now get on a train and visit her sister who was married to a dentist in Whitney Pier.

Rachel now had access to a sizable town, as the coal and steel industries were booming. She would find shops displaying the latest winter goods including felt and velvet hats, plain and fancy ribbons, and ready-made clothing for ladies, gents and children. She also had some close associations with Boston and Montreal where she had cousins who helped her to follow the rapidly changing styles and to acquire the magazines, patterns and notions needed for the work she produced. One of Rachel's aunts worked for a clothing store in Boston making alternations to off-the-rack dresses. She sent the Campbell women old catalogs and magazines (Ladies Home Journal, or Woman's Weekly) and scraps of material, all of which kept them in tune with the fashions and innovations of their time.

At home, Rachel studied the T. Eaton catalog and visited the sample rooms attached to the village store, where travelers showed the latest products for home decoration, including stamped burlap kits from the Bluenose order house in New Glasgow for hooked rugs or designs stamped in linen for doilies and centrepieces with directions and colours to be used.

Rachel's Trousseau

'Trousseau' (or trussell) comes from the 13th century French word 'trousse', meaning bundle. In the 19th century this term came to mean the collection of a bride-elect's gowns and linens.

Among the pieces in Rachel's trousseau is a beautiful tea-gown. It was the gift of Rachel's mother Beth, who studied dressmaking (learning to follow the new printed patterns and to work with a sewing machine) at a school on Boularderie Island in the 1860s. Rachel's sister Mary used her mother's sewing machine for rough work mostly, but this year she worked with a will, if not the same expertise, on a shirtwaist and skirt in the new short street length that had come into vogue for busy and physically active women. Rachel's lingerie was sewn by her aunts who spent winter nights attending to each fine detail.

'The bride traveled in a dress of grey.' A tailored suit or day dress was most likely to be made or bought to be worn for one's wedding. There were occasions however, when the bride married in a traditional afternoon gown and veil. This was Rachel's choice for two reasons. One was her passion for weaving and her desire to work with a silk thread. Another was that her family's farm was prosperous enough to support her in her ambitions, so Rachel wove yardage of spun silk in a twill pattern and additional fabric using a reeled silk in a similar colour. She devised this simple and elegant narrow-waisted gown in the popular S-silhouette fashion. She passed on remnants of the fabric with which Mrs. Florian of Sydney devised a complimentary hat.

The costumes in Rachel's trousseau show how America, rather than Britain (specifically Scotland), was dictating dress styles, for young people especially. There were more caps or lace collars on loose fitting untailored black, brown or dark blue gowns.

Friends of Lake Ainslie Weavers and Craft Guild

A tremendous number of people contributed to the contents of this collection. We think we've made our point that the skills of yesterday are in evidence in rural Cape Breton today. Of course one family, much less one heroic girl, was never likely to produce as much handwork as our premise maintains, paragon that Rachel is.

In response to our proposal for this exhibit we received many excited offers of contributions. There are pieces here from all over Inverness County, as well as from the United States and other Provinces of Canada. The Lake Ainslie Weavers and Craft Guild wish to thank all of our friends for their gifts of time, work and encouragement.

The pieces submitted by our Friends reflect fine craftsmanship and talent. They also reflect innovations in technique, materials and fashion that have come about over the last century. For example, Rachel's wedding gown is lined with rayon. In 1901 it's not likely that Rachel would have had access to a sample of the new 'artificial silk', but availability and cost limited our options here.

As well, there were some skills and processes to which we had no easy access; some that are long out of use because the source of materials has disappeared. For example, the growing and processing of flax for linen yarn went out of practice as cotton fabric and yarns from the American south became widely available Canada in the mid-1800s. The work of using natural dyes involved so much time for collecting and processing that a household needed many hands, and time upon them, to spare someone for the task. It's because our friend Betty has an interest in such things that we have a colour wheel depicting sources for natural dyes and the colours they produce.

The reason we know anything about the skills of our ancestors is community. Almost unanimously our contributing artists were introduced by a relation or friend to knitting, weaving, quilting or making lace. Changes in fashion have made it easy to decide not to spend time on handwork when no one has an interest in it, although that vogue swings in as often as out, and there's a great deal of interest in Victorian/Edwardian styles today.

Then and now, the enthusiasts found ways to enhance their skills by following patterns found in magazines, newspapers or by sharing information and projects with likeminded artists. They then spent their winter nights in quilting bees or milling frolics. Now they enjoy the community fostered by organizations such as the Lake Ainslie Weavers Guild and the Scotsville School of Crafts.