Aunt Nin and her quilt

This is my great great aunt, Jane McNaught. 

She was born in the mid 1800s and grew up on the family farm near Glen Morris, Ontario. She was the eldest of four children. She had three brothers- Charles, Robert-who was killed by a run-away cart,-and Samuel. Sam and his family moved to the Peace Country, followed in 1911 by my great grandfather Charles, my great grandmother Eliza, and some of their children, travelling by rail and then ox cart to their homestead near Beaverlodge. Aunt Nin, as she was known to my mom and aunt, followed in 1913 accompanied by a couple of my great aunts who were teenagers at the time.

I don't know much about my great great aunt except that she never married, was exceptionally talented at needlecraft and had a resourceful, pioneering spirit.  She knew her new home would not be as established as the Ontario farm where she had always lived, so she brought with her a platform rocker so she would be comfortable on uneven floors.  It sits in my living room today, and despite its rather delicate proportions, is a sturdy item that can seat a grown man comfortably.

Aunt Nin's most famous creation was a crazy quilt she spent years making by hand. She took leftover pieces of brocade, taffeta, velvet, and silk and sewed them together imaginatively, embroidering delicate designs freehand on the plainer bits. Each piece was joined with colourful embroidered stitches, no two alike. The date she started -March 1887-and the date she finished-March 1893- can be found stitched into the quilt. The back is hand-stitched to the backing cloth in stitches so neat, even and tiny, one would think it was made by a machine. 

When Aunt Nin died, my grandmother-her namesake- inherited the quilt. When I was a kid, sometimes Gramain would take it out of the cabinet at the top of the stairs and show it to me and my cousins. We admired the handiwork. The bits of painted silk that had begun to rot. The little pictures this unknown aunt had stitched into the cloth. And, then the quilt went back into storage, too delicate to grace a bed. Too precious to be put to use. When my grandmother died, I inherited the quilt. I stored it in a special case, looking at it from time to time.

It took Aunt Nin 6 years to make her quilt, but for well over a hundred years, it has been hidden from view. One day it will be nothing but scraps of cloth. Who will have seen it? Who will have appreciated the skill and creativity and the hours that went into its creation? Who will be there to speculate on the character of the woman who created it? To wonder what Aunt Nin was thinking of during the hours and days and years she toiled over this crazy quilt. Did she remember the parties and events each scrap of cloth represented? Did it fill her with the memories of younger days? Perhaps she imagined it would one day sit on her own bed in her own house. Perhaps she thought about how it would be passed down through the generations. Or perhaps it was just the result of a low cost hobby that helped her while away the time as she watched her brothers marry and settle down and raise their own children as she, the spinster aunt, aged.

Aunt Nin was 41 years old when she started her quilt and 47 when she stitched the date signifying its completion. She was 67 whe she packed up her platform rocker and her quilt and her nieces and moved from the only home she had ever knew to a pioneer shack in the bush of northern Alberta. By the time she left Ontario, she must have known that quilt would never grace a bed in her own home. But it would always be a kaleidoscope of memories, pieced together one bit at a time. It was the work of her own hand, something to comfort her as she lived out the rest of her days in her brother's house. 

We moved this summer. Starting a new life in a new house in a new province, I think about those who went before. Those who took a chance. Those who laboured to create a life in a new place. Those, like Aunt Nin, who made the most of what life offered.

Aunt Nin's quilt now hangs on a wall in my house.

When I look at it, I think about those who make the best of their circumstances. Those who take the scraps of what could be a drab and humdrum existence and make it into something beautiful.