Laura Secord. A Life in Ordinary Time

 Morning Jo.

We are at three weeks of lockdown. I haven't put gas in my car since Dec. 8 and I still have 3/4 of a tank. My cupboards are full. I am sheltered and warm.

One of the things I have been doing for myself is hanging a quilt on the line almost every day. 

Today it is one of my favourites .Laura Secord: A Life in Ordinary Time.

I made this in 2012 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. Laura has long been a hero to me. There was a family legend that we were related to her. I decided to do a little research and find out. It didn't take me long to discover that we are not related. But I did find a few interesting things about Laura. First.. she shares a birthday with my daughter Liza. Sept. 13. Laura was born in 1775; Liza 1974. 199 years apart. When Laura made the famous 20 km walk from Queenston to Decew, she was 38 years old. She had birthed 5 children and her husband had been injured the previous fall at the battle of Queenston Heights. She had gone to the battlefield to find James and brought him injured back to the house in a wheelbarrow.

This is the image that Canada Post chose to honour Laura. I think maybe they should have done a little more research.

I wanted my quilt to explore what Laura's life was like. There is a little house. a garden, chickens, a fox and of course a cow. I don't know how the legend of the cow happened but it's unlikely that there was a cow with Laura on her walk. She also met a group of first nations people who helped Laura find her way to General Fitzgibbons and his army. 

I made this quilt in three sections and quilted each one separately on my little Phaff.  Then i joined them together. I laid the three sections out on my counter in order to cut them exactly to size. I got the rotary cutter out and my ruler and started cutting the longer panel. I remember thinking that it seemed pretty thick. Did i stop to check? NO. Why would I check??? And when I picked up the column I discovered that I had cut through two columns - not one. I had cut the chickens heads off. After a little spike in my blood pressure, I stitched everything back together.

I like to use the back, too. This is the back- hand dyed fabric, Ikea fabric remnant . I wrote the story of Laura's walk, her family's names and the dates of their births. I think that Laura must have had a garden. I wrote some of the names of flowers she might have had growing around her home. I wrote her receipt ( or recipe as we call it) for crumpets. She probably made them often.

I wonder who cared for her children while she was away. I wonder what she did when she got home. I wonder if she had a happy life.

It's been interesting  to look at my work. Like a retrospective. It's bringing back some memories of where I was in my life when I made each one.

I think the reason that I like this quilt so much is that it seems so happy I know that I was in a happy time in my life when I made it. 

I sometimes feel like I have lost a bit of my story telling. My most recent quilts have not been as personal a project. They have gotten bigger, more colourful, and more traditional and more practical. I think I need to head back into the storytelling kind of work. I miss it. I need to get my mojo back.

karenthestoryteller