Place

Delta, British Columbia

Date

1989

DIMENSIONS in centimetres

128 x 92

Materials & techniques

Cotton, rayon, cotton/polyester blend, polyester; Quilting, embroidery

Credit

Kitty Gray, Barbara Hogan, Mary Johnson, Evelyn Fraser, Emily Johnson, Amelia Petri

ID

Delta Museum and Archives Society DE1990.79

This quilted banner was created by “The Quilters of Ladner,” from Ladner, British Columbia, for presentation to Ethel Mowat on the occasion of her 90^th birthday in 1989. The date on the banner indicates the year the quilt was started, a full year in advance of Mowat’s birthday. The names on the quilt are those who started the quilt: Kitty Gray, Barbara Hogan, Mary Johnson, and Evelyn Fraser. This banner does more than commemorate Ethel Mowat’s birthday, it commemorates the group. Mowat’s house was the meeting place for the quilters; they gathered around her dining-room table every Monday night for 15 years. Here the community of quilters learned from each other and improved their skills.
 
The collaboration and sharing that is often a part of quilting also supports the creation of community. These participants were young women when they started learning from Mowat, and they brought their children to her home while they sewed. Their shared experiences and friendships underpinned and incubated the culture of a core group of quilters in Ladner that has persisted over time and continues to inform the function and development of the community. In this way quilts are often an essential historical source, providing rare insight into how a community views itself.