As guests arrived at the Jack Graham Community Centre Sunday for a spaghetti supper, they were greeted with a long-forgotten piece of history that had recently been discovered in a local barn: a 111-year-old quilt covered in hand-embroidered names from the Elmside Homemakers Club of 1916.
The large quilt, which was laid out on a table at the community centre Sunday evening, is made up of hundreds of small patches of different colours sewn together, each containing hand-stitched names. In the centre is a large green patch that reads ‘Elmside Homemakers Club 1916, Bristol Q’.
Before sitting down to enjoy plates of steaming spaghetti, served by the Bristol Community Association following the afternoon’s euchre tournament, attendees could be found with their noses hovering over the quilt, trying to spot names they might recognize.
The discovery of this piece of local history came about a month ago. Les Thompson, a member of the Bristol Community Association (BCA) that hosted Sunday’s euchre tournament and spaghetti supper, was cleaning out his grandmother’s barn when he opened up a Rubbermaid container and found the quilt inside.
Thompson spotted the name of a Mrs. Jack McNeill, which he figured to be his grandmother, next to which is stitched the word ‘Pres’, which led him to believe she may have been president of this mysterious homemakers club.
But beyond this, Thompson said he knows very little about the quilt or the people who made it.
“The fact that nobody really knows is kind of the most interesting part,” Thompson said. “It’s so old that very few residents might know anything.”
Nora Findlay, a 93-year-old BCA member, has been holding onto the quilt for safe keeping since Thompson found it. She said she also recognized a few names embroidered on the patchwork quilt, including her grandmother, Annie Grant.
“It’s nice to see people you know,” Findlay said. “There are a few neighbours on there, and their parents.”
Findlay said that she hopes other people recognize names.
“That’s one of the reasons that we brought it here,” Findlay said on Sunday evening. “I want people to get to look at it.”
Thompson isn’t sure what to do with the quilt now, but he hopes to find someone who knows more about it.
Around the corner and a safe distance away from the quilt, spaghetti dinner was being served.
BCA member Edith Campbell explained that the euchre and spaghetti supper event, which the BCA named Cabin Fever, is about getting people out during the winter.
“It’s nice to see people out [and] eating lots of pasta,” Campbell said as she and fellow BCA member Peter Haughton finished serving the evening’s first sitting of spaghetti dinner.
Volunteers contributed pasta, garlic bread, caesar salad, desserts and homemade pasta sauces, all of which diners could enjoy for the cost of $15 a plate.
The event was organized as a fundraiser for the BCA, which will use part of the money raised from the dinner and euchre tournament to maintain the Bristol skating rink, and half of the money raised from the euchre tournament was awarded to its winners, Lawrence Kluke and Anne Kluke.
