Quilts of Frontenac County

Oct 29, 2015

Bethany Garner is a long time quilter and quilt collector with an impressive collection of heritage quilts from Frontenac County. At the Trinity Quilters Heritage Quilt show in Verona on October 17, she had on display 27 quilts from her personal collection. For anyone interested in heritage quilts from Frontenac County, Garner's collection was a gold mine. No less than 24 of her quilts were what she categorized as Frontenac County farm quilts, which span a time period from 1870 to 1970.

One quilt of particular note was a red flannel-backed log cabin quilt, a piece she acquired at the Kingston Farmers' Market back in the early 1990s after she moved to Elginburg with her family.

Garner recalled how her “heart gasped” as she watched a woman unpacking her wares one market day and she first laid eyes on what she described as a 100 plus-year-old log cabin “field and furrows” quilt. “I tried to appear just slightly interested,” she remembered and quickly purchased it for $85. She then rushed home immediately with it in order to “savour each little log.”

Garner believes that the quilt came from a farm in Portland and was pieced together in 1880. The quilt boasts indigo prints, madder and clock prints and flannels and other wool and flax seed materials, all of which Garner said are staples from Ontario homes. The quilt's later backing shows that it was finished likely at the turn of the 20th century.

A second quilt of equal interest and one of Garner's favorites is a red and white feathered star quilt, which she holds in particularly high esteem for the complexity of its piecing. “The small pieces and the complexity of the angles are amazing and are why I think this quilt is so spectacular.” The quilt, which was made in Sharbot Lake, comes from two sister quilters and Garner said a similar sister quilt is in the permanent collection at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston.

Garner, who is currently studying to be a professional quilt appraiser, has been making quilts herself for 50 years and is a past president of the Canadian Quilters Association. She said that she is actually “more interested in the encyclopedia of fabrics that every quilt contains rather than the actual pattern of the quilt”. Her collection was one of the highlights of the show for those especially interested in heritage quilts from Frontenac County