Communal Chores and Homespun Help
Life was hard for the women who sailed with their families from the Isle of Skye to the Island of Prince Edward, but a strong tradition of community and camaraderie helped to make the unrelenting work more bearable. Settler wives helped one another with childbirth and child care, and gathered together to wash their clothes, dig their gardens and plant their crops. Guided by the maxim that “many hands make light work,” they turned monotonous chores into entertaining social gatherings. While “quilting bees” were a familiar pioneer pastime around the Island, the women of Prince Edward Island also held other kinds of work parties, including:

• Spinning Frolics – Spinning wheels whirred in unison as groups of women congregated to spin the yarn that they had carded by hand from the wool of their sheep.
• Scutching – Homegrown flax was cut in the fall and threshed by hand with a flail to separate the woody fibres from those suitable for spinning and weaving into linen.
• Thickening Frolics – Seated at long tables and singing Gaelic songs, groups of women kneaded the dampened homespun cloth until a variety of thicknesses were attained. The thickest cloth, known as “drugget” was used for sewing mens’ pants and womens’ skirts.

Art and Utility: An Island Quilting Tradition
The “Georgetown Quilt” that hangs on the wall of The King’s Playhouse, portraying historic homes and buildings in the Georgetown area, as well as the town’s official crest, is a modern-day version of a practical handcraft that has been taken to a high art by contemporary Prince Edward Island quilters. At the Cardigan Craft Centre, housed in the village of Cardigan’s former railway station, quilts are a featured product of the Cardigan Craft Guild, and at Montague’s Garden of the Gulf Museum, visitors will find a distinctive “Nine Patch” quilt – a quilt within a quilt, with an earlier quilt used to form the batting of the later quilt. Around the province, quilt guilds (such as Charlottetown’s Kindred Spirits Quilt Guild) and quilting workshops and “jamborees” are coordinated by organizations such as the Prince Edward Island Crafts Council. Many churches and community organizations hold fundraising quilt sales that feature quilt raffles, auctions, and sponsored “signature quilts.”

While Prince Edward Island quilting is now a world-renowned art, early pioneer women who pieced together endless scraps of fabric, and sewed an infinite number of tiny, perfect stitches, were simply trying to keep their families warm. Beautiful but practical bed quilts were often made with recycled clothing; many owners of family heirloom quilts, preserved in special “quilt boxes,” can point to a piece of a great-grandmother’s wedding dress, or a great-grandfather’s uniform.

The evolution of Prince Edward Island quilting as both a utility and an art features several highlights:
• Shore Quilts – Made from heavier fabrics than those used for bed quilts, with layers tied together with knotted string instead of sewn together with stitching, shore quilts were designed to be made quickly, and deliver maximum warmth. They were often carried down to the shore by the wives of lobster fishermen, or made in quantity for the seasonal labourers who worked at the canneries. They were sometimes referred to as “rough quilts.”
• Red and White Quilts – In the early 20th century, especially between the years of 1915 and 1920, Island quilters embraced the North American craze for finely-pieced quilts made in geometric designs of red and white. Popular patterns included “Sawtooth” and “Irish Chain.”
• Acadian Quilts – Quilting has been a dominant art of Prince Edward Island’s French-heritage Acadian community, with geometric designs such as “enchainé (Irish Chain), “couverture en brique” (Brick Design) and “cabane de rondon” (Log Cabin) as popular patterns. A photographic record of Acadian quilts forms part of the archives of the Acadian Museum in Miscouche, near Summerside.
• Names Quilts – Used for decades for community fundraising, “names quilts” consist of quilt squares bearing the embroidered names of sponsors and donors. The quilts are sold, auctioned or raffled for additional fundraising.
• Contemporary Art Quilts – Designed to be hung as wall art, Prince Edward Island art quilts make creative use of colour, hand-dyed fabrics, a combination of hand-stitching and machine embroidery, and a wide variety of embellishment techniques. Some contemporary Island quilters have developed sophisticated methods of portraying Island landscapes.