Shack, Sybil

English

Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

Carrying on a North American Tradition:Eleanor Boyce, Quilt-makerAn Interview with Sybil ShackEleanor Boyce parle de son amour pour I'art tradi-tionnel de la courtepointe.Eleanor Boyce is a short, slim woman, whose rich voice stillcarries a hint of the Maritimes from which she came and ofthe Irish that is part of her birthright. Because she has, andhas always had, such a commanding presence, I had neverthought of her as being short although I have known her forover forty years. When we first met she was principal of thehigh school at Roland, Manitoba, a village six miles acrossa main highway from where my sister was struggling throughher first year of teaching in a one room rural school. Eleanor- was· the confidante and friend, the substitute mother and theprofessional support of all the young teachers for miles a- .round, my sister among them. Later she was to become presI-dent of the Manitoba Teachers' Society, a school inspectorfor the Province of Manitoba, an instructor at the Teachers'College and a member of the Faculty of Education at theUniversity of Manitoba. Along the way she accumulated aMaster of Education degree, and earned her PH .0., was abroadcaster over the international service of the cBe, wrotescripts and textboo ks, and maintained contact with herlarge family and host of friends. Following her first of sev-eral 'retirements' she acted as consultant to the WinnipegHebrew schools. A practising Catholic she has interests thatare ecumenical and eclectic. When she taught in a Ukrainiancommunity she learned to work the traditional Ukrainiancross stitch and enough of the language to understand morethan her pupils suspected. During her attachment to the He-brew schools she claims that she learned with and from herpupils, learned a little Hebrew and much of traditions andculture.And she is still learning, as she told me the afternoon I visitedher to hear about the making of patchwork quilts. She hasbeen pursuing this craft for the past few years with her usualenthusiasm for anything ~he undertakes.The quilts, neatly folded in plastic bags, were piled six feethigh in the bedroom closet. One by one Eleanor Bayce tookthem out and spread them on the bed for me to admire. Someof the patterns I was familiar with. I had seen them in the early1930's gracing the beds of farmhouses near Foxwarren in wes-8tern Manitoba, when I was a young teacher there. The patterns-and sometimes the quilts-had been brought in the 1870's fromBruce and Grey counties and the Talbot settlement in Ontario,precious reminders of the homes the women had left behindthem as they took the long trek by ox drawn 'vvagon and onfoot overland to Grand Forks in North Dakota, on flat boatdown the Red River and overland again for nearly two hundredmiles before they settled once more and built the brick housesthat reproduced exactly the solid farmhouses of the Ontariocountryside. The 'Colonial Lady', the 'Bear's Paw', 'Grandmo-ther's Fan' I had seen, many times washed and delicately faded,as spreads in the bedrooms of the Sutherlands, the Grahams,and the Talbots.I knew that Eleanor Boyce had come to Manitoba from NewBrunswick to teach, as so many Maritimers had come after theFirst World War. Where had she found her patterns? Here inManitoba? Or had she brought them with her from the provincewhere she was born?E.B.: Most of my designs are my grandmother's, modified, ofcourse, and adapted. But they are the trad itional designs. Didyou know that the patchwork quilt is a distinctly North Amer-ican art form? The United Empire Loyalist women broughttheir quilts and their patterns and their tradition of quiltingwith them when they came to the Maritimes and to Ontario.My grandmother taught me how to knit and how to quilt.The Sisters at school taught me to crochet and to tat. I've al-ways loved handwork. How long have I been quilting? Well,my grandmother let me work on a quilt, let me put in a fewstitches, before I went to school; 1might have been fouryears old. I have no doubt now that she pulled out my un-steady stitches when I wasn't there to see; but I rememberbeing very pleased and proud that she let me work with her.She died in 1912.5.5.: Tell me about your grandmother.E.B.: She was my mother's mother, Eleanor Murphy. She wasborn in New Brunswick, in 1845, and married ChristopherKierstead. There's quite a clan of Kiersteads and Boyces scat-tered across the country and around the world. On Mondaymornings, she used to say, she would walk along the streetand inspect the clothes lines where the quilts were hung outto dry, and take note of the various patterns. She was a greatplagiarizer, my grandmother Kierstead.5.5.: So was Shakespeare! If you are following in her foot-steps I assume that she borrowed the patterns, then used herown ideas about their arrangement, their colours and the linesof quilting.E.B.: Ri.ght you are.At this point we were looking at a beautiful quilt with sweeping,curved patchwork pieces, and quilting in tiny stitches thatwhirled and whorled around the empty spaces and in the squarecorners.E.B.: That's a very old design, usually called the Prince of Wales'Feather. An interesting part of the quilt-making for me is theblocking out of the patterns.Eleanor brought out a box of patterns, carefully blocked outfirst on squared paper. Here were the beginnings of her quilts.Combinations and tecombinations of the components could beused again and again: circles and semi-circles and segments ofcircles, lapping, overlapping, straight lines and curves, trianglesof all sizes. Put together in endless permutations and combina-tions they produced the intricate, individual patchwork designsand running, integrating stitches of the quilting.E.B.: Do you see these circles? Here they are on the pattern andhere on the quilt. The small ones are tracings of the rims of juiceglasses, the larger ones of water glasses. The long straight linesI mark with my yardstick. The distance between them is thewidth of the yardstick.I was admiring the turkey red and white quilt Eleanor had un-folded for me.E.B.: That's usually called-or at least we have always called it-the 'Bear's Paw'. It's made up of 30 blocks, 71 pieces, 2 inchesby 2 inches-I haven't gone metric yet. How many stitches? Ican't even make a guess. This I can tell you. There are generally6 to 10 stitches to an inch. When you have 8 stitches to theinch you have a really nice quilt. Here's another of my grand-mother's patterns. It's the 'Triple Irish Chain', 78 by 105 inches,17 pieces to the block, 63 blocks, 1094 pieces all told.The large 'Tripie Irish Chain' quilt was spread out for me to seein its wholeness. It was in glowing shades ranging from pink tomaroon: pale pink, hot pink, a dainty print on et dark red ground.E.B.: I enjoy the mathematical patterns most of all. There is atremendous satisfaction in deciding on a motif, in blocking outthe pattern, in cutting the separate parts exactly to size, in find-ing that the pieces fit honestly, that the corners are true. Idraw the design, lay it out on this squared paper-my habit ofdrawing, like my stitching, I learned from my grandmother-and transfer it to the cloth. Did you know that on my quiltingframe I use the clamps my grandmother used? As I work onmy quilts I have a great sense of continuity. What I am doingmy grandmother did, and before her her mother and her grand-mother. I said earlier that the patchwork quilt is a North A-merican art form, but of course quilting itself is a much oldercraft. The first patchwork quilts were truly patchwork. In co-lon ial times fabrics were too precious to waste. Quilts weremade in various weights of cloth, and were originally totallyutilitarian. But the human need for self-expression, for beautyand order, soon spurred women to arrange their scraps of clothin patterned designs. Scraps of sil k and lace and velvet werefashioned into elegant spreads, and women dyed cotton andlinen and homespun to meet their artistic requirements. Someof the motifs I have used in my quilts are very old, and I thinkvery lovely. As I work on them I feel close to my grandmotherand to the many women whose pleasure and sense of achieve-ment I am sharing as I watch the blocks take shape, and thequilt itself grow.5.5.: Your quilts are obviously not made of ~craps. What doyou use?E.B.: You will have noticed that my quilts are light in weight.(I can assure you that they are also warm.) I make use of ma-terials that are available now but were not to my ancestors-cotton and polyester mixtures,mostly, because they washwell, and a polyester bat as fill. It doesn't mat, and the needlegoes through it easily. By the way, the needle is important. Iknow that I have the right needle when I feel it. My preferenceis for an English steel needle. The material for the backgroundand for the designs I bUy at a fabric shop. The proprietorknows me, and keeps an eye out for what he th in ks I mightbe able te)" use. No, not remnants as a rule, although I don'tsay no to an interesting remnant that might fit something Iwant to put together. I select my fabrics carefully for quality,colour, design if I am choosing prints, and for texture.You say I am a perfectionist. Yes and no. Let me repeat my-self by saying that I derive pleasure from the mathematicalexactness of having everything come toget,her as I had visual-ized and planned it, but my quilts are not perfect by anymeans. They are a human product. When arthritis stri kes anda stitch goes in badly, I don't rip it out. Deep down in myheart I suppose I feel that the tiny imperfections are part ofthe individuality of a quilt. And the quilts are individual. Thefilling of spaces between motifs, for example, leaves room forornamental stitching that helps bring up the designs in theblocks. Every corner and every interstice is a challenge to o'ne'screative instincts.5.5.: What about the names of the different designs? I can seethe 'Prince of Wales' Feather' and 'Grandmother's Fan'. Butwhat about some of the others? The 'Bear's Paw', for example.I must confess that I didn't see a bear's paw in it until youtraced it for me.E.B.: Ah, there's the beauty of the mathematical forms. Theymake different images as you look atthem from differentpoints of view, just as people looking at the constellationshave seen different images in the clusters of stars. The ancientssaw l)rsa the Bear where we see a Big Dipper. Look at thisquilt. Over the decades as women stitched together their quiltsthey gave them names according to the images they saw asthey arranged the pieces. So the quilt you see here has beencalled the 'Quilt of Many Names'. Some of the names are'Monkey Wrench', 'Cow Poke', 'Churn Dasher', 'Barn Door'.All right now-adjust your perception of the arrangement ofthe pieces according to shape and colour. Don't you see dif-ferent things in it, different images as you view it from differ-ent angles or as light falls on it in different ways? There's thebasic pattern; or is it? Don't you see it sometimes as a square,sometimes as a square surrounded by triangles, sometimes astriangles only, sometimes as cubist portraits? Yet from everypoint of view it is mathematical, orderly, and pleasing to theeye.5.5.: How did you happen to turn to quilt-making in the lastfew years?E.B.: You can't really say that I 'happened to turn' to quilt-making. Actually I have been making quilts almost an my life.It's sil11ply that I have more time now to spend on doing some-thing that gives me pleasure and gives pleasure to other people.(Not always to my immediate family. They tell me that theyLolita, Lilithare thoroughly tired of seeing me working away at my quilts...although they help me a good deal, and I believe are not a lit-tle prou~ of my accomplishm~nts. My brother-a retired armyofficer-Is most helpful when It comes to laying out my pat-terns.) I believe firmly that we should all have an occupationcall it a hobby if you will, an expression of, and an outlet fo(our creativity. Something in which we can become totally ,absorbed. That is, a hobby in addition to reading, which forme, as for many others, remains the prime hobby. I have al-.ways liked handwork. I have always liked drawing. I have al-ways liked seeing things grow. I have always wanted things tofall into place, to fit together. Making quilts meets all my likes.Don't think for a moment that this is all I do. I read. I writea little. I make cushions, seat pads. I hook pictures. I even cooka!though I admit I don't get the same satisfaction out of put- 'tlng a meal together as I do out of putting a quilt together.Yes, I have sold some of my quilts, and I suppose I could sellmore of them if I made the effort. But I don't make them forsale. I make them for the joy of making them.the man's fantasynotthe Dante's Beatiicewhen she was nineat a private feastin Mayin 1274norLaure, Laureenwhen she was twelvePetrarch, madlya flower in flightfell in lovewith hernot she for himthough the satisfied become-poets, they saidand 'the false hopes pursued Lilithfemale demon or night witch or vampireadam first refusedfailure turned for scapegoattake black, alter, width of pelvisa witch is created, never bornall liliths that haunt, rolita,haunt lies(what you bore could not be writtendown)not to beborneandtimes change livesCathy Ford10

Carrying on a North American Tradition: Eleanor Boyce, Quilt-Maker

https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/download/14549/13601

Carrying on a North American Tradition: Eleanor Boyce, Quilt-Maker

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Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)