People & Culture
Dating back hundreds of years, quilting was practiced by Black Nova Scotian matriarchs as a way of telling stories and continuing oral history
As a child growing up in East Preston, N.S., Melinda Clayton Patterson watched her mother Lilian hand-sew quilt after quilt. One stitch at a time, Lilian pieced together squares of old fabric to make a cozy blanket that would keep Clayton Patterson warm on the coldest of days.
“My mother would just cut up old clothing,” says Clayton Patterson. “It wasn’t about making a quilt to represent this, that or the other. It was about making a quilt for warmth.”
Little did Clayton Patterson realize her mother — along with dozens of other Black Nova Scotian matriarchs — was making history and telling stories through a utilitarian practice dating back hundreds of years. Someday soon, Clayton Patterson would be making history too.
“It wasn’t considered an art form until recently, so essentially quilts were just part of the fabric of what people did, what the women did,” says David Woods, a self-taught multidisciplinary artist and founder of the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia.
In the late ’90s, Woods was co-curating an exhibit of works from Black Nova Scotian artists called In This Place when a friend, Alfreda Smith, asked whether he’d thought to include quilts. “Once I [started] looking at quilts, I realized that was actually the main tradition in the community,” says Woods. “Almost every community had quilters.”
As Woods made his way from community to community, visiting Black neighbourhoods across the province, he realized not only were there many Black quilters — but depending on where he went, many had their own unique styles and patterns. For example, “East Preston was literally all strip quilts,” says Woods.
Strip quilts use strips of fabric to make up the entire quilt, a process with roots in West Africa, according to Woods. Other communities used more complicated patterns. “You got to some places like Weymouth and Digby, where the patterns were very sophisticatedly done,” Woods says.
In 1998, as the first collective Black art exhibit in Nova Scotia, In This Place shone a spotlight on more than 40 local artists — and introduced Nova Scotia to quilts from Black communities as art. “It led to other things, including the creation of a new quilt guild, the Vale Quilters, and an ongoing relationship with quilts,” says Woods.
Strip quilts use strips of fabric to make up the entire quilt, a process with roots in West Africa, according to Woods. Other communities used more complicated patterns. “You got to some places like Weymouth and Digby, where the patterns were very sophisticatedly done,” Woods says.
In 1998, as the first collective Black art exhibit in Nova Scotia, In This Place shone a spotlight on more than 40 local artists — and introduced Nova Scotia to quilts from Black communities as art. “It led to other things, including the creation of a new quilt guild, the Vale Quilters, and an ongoing relationship with quilts,” says Woods.
Myla Borden, one of the featured quilters, started the Vale Quilters Association in 2007. The association has been involved in numerous art exhibits.
As he spoke with more quilters, Woods discovered quilting was also a means to continue oral history. He realized some quilters were reproducing “Underground Railroad” patterns said to contain secret codes. In 1999, the book Hidden in Plain View suggested Black people seeking asylum from slavery used quilts with specific patterns to navigate escape on the Underground Railroad. For example, the log cabin pattern depicted a square surrounded by rectangles and meant escapees had found a safe house.
These patterns resonated with many people in the Black community across the globe, including Melinda Clayton Patterson and Heather Cromwell, who regularly use the patterns. “I myself was intrigued by it,” Clayton Patterson says. “I started getting more and more involved with it, and it just took over my heart.”
Also inspired by the Underground Railroad patterns, Cromwell, of the Vale Quilters Association, created a multigenerational quilt with her granddaughter, son and mother called “It Takes Four.”
Then, in 2011, the exhibit The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Picture and Narrative Quilts, curated by Woods, made its debut. It featured African Nova Scotian quilt-making, with quilts from 1930 to 1960, traditional and contemporary patterns, picture quilts designed by Woods and Underground Railroad patterns.
The exhibit has since been adapted and expanded to go on tour nationally. “The work that comes out of the Black community is worth seeing,” says Cromwell. “It speaks for itself.”
Woods isn’t sure whether quilts were used to guide the way of enslaved people, but he does know one thing for certain: it left a mark on the community, changing how people saw age-old patterns. “The patterns had new meaning for folks, new vitality.”
Clayton Patterson says the patterns are still important. “Even though I’m not able to trace it back in my family, it’s still part of my history. It’s Black history.” She has no doubt there are still hundreds of Black quilters in the province, and she wants the legacy to continue.
“I just want to share my techniques and theories for as long as I can and share it with as many people as I can… I think it’s great to share not only with your own culture but with other cultures,” says Clayton Patterson. “We just need to keep doing what we’re doing.”
This story is from the January/February 2025 Issue
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