Women's History Poetry: On women quilting

We begin innocently,
as strangers,
stitch and turn,
repair and bind,
the talk between quilts
held us together,
stories, dreams, revelations, laughter.
We shared more than fabric.
We began to quilt for others.
Sometimes we were angry.
Sometimes we despaired.
Stitch and turn,
repair and bind.
We attended weddings and funerals.
Our quilts remain,
a history of stitches.

This is the first little poem I've written in quite a while. Pared down to simplicity, the words remind me of how women create beauty out of small scraps of fabric, sometimes those scraps that we cannot throw out. So we repurpose, and the quilts remain to brighten our daily lives. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have old quilts, those made by women we knew.

Quilting has gradually become a passion, a process of making something from a flat piece of cloth. You'll find a quilt in every book I write, sometimes drawn from history. The fascinating story of the Rajah Quilt, made in 1841 by women transported to Van Diemen's Land (present day Tasmania) for petty crimes is hidden like a small quilt block in Standing Stones. Can you imagine being down in the hold of a small sailing vessel, on a trip that took four months, and sewing a quilt?

This poem came about because of Morgan Dragonwillow's mini-poetry challenge to celebrate Women's History Month. See what others have written here. Morgan will be back here as a guest on March 15 to introduce her new book, Wild Woman Waking.

Q is for Quilting . . .

Now you know it. Quilting and writing are my two, slightly obsessive passions. So, how could a quilt possibly figure in a historical novel set in the 1840s in Van Diemen's Land? I came across the story of Kezia Hayter, a rather intrepid young woman recruited by the famous Quaker Elizabeth Fry to accompany a group of women prisoners transported to, you guessed it, Van Diemen's Land.

Elizabeth Fry (with her committee of concerned Quakers) visited the women in prison, comforted them, prayed with them, and before these over 175 women left, the Quakers brought each woman a bag of sewing notions and fabric for the long journey, that their hands might be usefully employed. Their ship, the Rajah, captained by Charles Ferguson, sailed south, and somehow these women created a quilt to present to the Government on arrival in April 1841.

The first miracle is that the quilt was finished. Parts, true, are clumsily sewn. Not all of the women knew how to sew. Certainly the dark, cramped conditions and the constantly rocking ship added to the difficulty of sewing. But the final quilt -- made of 2,815 pieces -- is a marvel of quilting, applique, and embroidery.

The quilt was duly presented to Lady Jane Franklin with a touching hand sewn announcement:

And then the quilt disappeared, only to be rediscovered in England and returned to Tasmania in 1989. It now resides in the National Gallery of Australia. The Rajah Quilt is taken out just once a year so that visitors can appreciate this artifact that these nameless women created -- beauty where none existed, perhaps hope to some. But their work is remembered, and I would very much like to see this quilt for myself. Perhaps one day.


Read more about the Rajah Quilt at the National Gallery of Australia or about Kezia Hayter and her captain, Charles Ferguson.

The Rajah Quilt . . .

This morning's research introduced me to a treasure -- the Rajah Quilt, hand sewn by women prisoners as they were transported by sailing ship, the Rajah, from the Pentonville Prison in England, to Hobart, Australia on a 5-month journey in 1841. The quilt, lost for decades and recovered just 20 years ago, is shown publicly just once a year at the National Gallery of Australia.



I can imagine these 180 women aboard the Rajah, a sailing cargo ship. For the next five months, they endured crowded conditions, were buffeted by storms, and yet they created this quilt. Each had been given a personal bag filled with sewing materials and two pounds of cut fabric scraps, granted by the Quaker group, the British Ladies Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners, so the women would find "industrious work" during the voyage. They sailed into the unknown, from one prison to another.

The quilt was presented to Lady Jane Franklin, wife of the governor of Tasmania (Australia), John Franklin, the famed Artic explorer, later lost in his quest to find the Northwest Passage (from Greenland).

I'm seeing a swirl of links to my novel-in-progress set in the Orkneys, Scotland, in the 1840s. Captain Ferguson of the Rajah took shelter from a storm in Stromness. He later married Kezia Heyter, the young woman sent by Elizabeth Fry to accompany the female prisoners. Some articles say Heyter was a matron; some say she was simply a passenger. I've thought of Elizabeth Fry as well, for she was a fearsome reformer, though she died in 1845. Yet her relationship to Kezia as mentor is an interesting one.

I'm still struggling to understand marriages in the upper class; no better model could be had than that of Lady Jane Franklin to John Franklin, both explorers, both independent. She wrote often to Elizabeth Fry, yet there is tension among historians as to her actual role in helping the female prisoners. But the good materials are all in the collections of the National Library of Australia. No time to order interlibrary loan. Sigh. So now, enough research! Back to the writing.