A quilt-like vintage hooked rug from Jessie A. Turbayne’s Hooked Rug Treasury
(While this isn’t really a story about rug hooking, it’s all about vintage which is the theme of our hook-in October 2. Read on for an (admittedly tenuous) connection to rug hooking!)
Do you like a good mystery? Are you interested in history? The article below about a quilt made in Canada during WW2 has it all - mystery, history AND textiles, to boot. Back in the 1940’s in order to support folks in the UK who were displaced by the war, Canadians rallied to produce goods for them: blankets, quilts, clothing, etc. We’re not talking about a handful of items: things were sent over in the hundreds of thousands!
Some of these items still exist, and there are folks out there researching them, and finding some of the original quilts. One such lady is Joanna Dermenjian. Her story and connection to the writer of the article below is quite amazing.
Here’s a link to the website where you’ll find the story. It’s told as part of a podcast. You can click on the link there to listen to it - think of it like a radio program….or…you scroll down below the photos you can read a transcript of the whole shebang. The website is called hapticandhue.com and there are tons of other interesting articles/podcasts available there.
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| Label from the quilt - photo by Joanna Dermenjian, published in the Gananoque Reporter |
The story was reasonably newsworthy: Click here to read the article in the Gananoque Reporter of the repatriation of the quilt, and of even more info that was added to Joanna’s research.
Joanna Dermenjian’s website/blog also has lots of interesting info - you can find her at sutureandselvedge.com. She has an instagram page, too, with even more info.
It was at her instagram page where i found that rather tenuous link to rug hooking…..She posted about a WW2 quilt that was repatriated from Australia to Moose Jaw, and included some newspaper clippings from back in the day, listing the thousands of items shipped to the UK. Included in that was the following:
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| (Screenshot from suture_and_selvage instagram account) |
(No. 32 Service Flying Training School was an RAF base near Moose Jaw, Sask.)
….and if you read the Gananoque Reporter article, you’ll recall that it mentioned a knitted rug…..so that tells us that not only were quilts part of the war effort, but also rugs, although likely in much smaller quantities. Rugs were usually put through a hard life, so it’s highly unlikely that any examples of WW2 items still exist…..but you never know……
Joanna has very kindly supplied me with links to other sources on vintage rugs, so I’ll feature them in future blog posts. Stay tuned.
