Quilts have always been an integral part of Mennonite life. Beginning as functional items in a home, they have become expressions of creativity and art. Quilts carry layers of meaning in the patterns that are used. They were given as special gifts to family members, especially when a daughter married. While quilts were initially utilitarian in nature, today they are seen as pieces of art. An exceptional quilt can fetch up to $10,000. 

This quilt was created by Alma Elias, a member of a quilting group known as Piecemakers for Peace. Her Log Cabin pattern was hand-quilted on a hoop frame using more than 220 different fabrics. This design dates back to a time when completed quilt tops were hand-stitched by women to welcome a new family into the Mennonite community. 

Each central red square represents the heath, and every narrow strip a log. The log cabin squares are arranged in a barn-raising style. While there is order in placement of light and dark fabrics, there is a random placement of the scraps themselves - hence it is called a scrappy quilt design. This king-size quilt is comprised of only cotton materials. 

Originally, blankets were made for such uses as bed comforters, crib coverlets, and even winter horse coverings. Older blankets were used to shelter plants against frost. Following a house fire or other tragedy, one of the first items taken to a family was a blanket.

Today blankets like these examples are made by the Mennonite Central Committee for shipment to impoverished places overseas. In the past year more than 4,100 blankets were sent from Saskatchewan to Syria and other countries.

Blankets are sewn together using cotton squares, with a layer of polyester batting, and a flannel backing. The layers are “tied” together by hand-stitching through all three layers. Blanket making is often a community activity. It is not uncommon for a church group to make a hundred blankets over a period of two or three weeks.

Maria was born in 1907, one of six children, in the Mennonite farming village of Grigorjewka, in South Russia. Life was good, but the 1917 Revolution and disease changed all that.

The anarchist, Nestor Makhnov, terrorized their village and many others. In 1918, Maria lost her sister and mother to tuberculosis, and her father to influenza. A year later another sister died. Orphaned and devastated, she and her siblings were adopted by grandparents. Compounding that, the children had to witness all of their life’s possessions auctioned off.

Fleeing political tyranny, 20,000 Mennonites immigrated to Canada from Russia in the 1920s. In 1925, Maria and her brother, Jacob joined them. They sailed from Southampton to Quebec City, and then travelled by train to Osler, Saskatchewan.

Assigned as a farm labourer, Maria married her bachelor boss, Cornelius Driedger in 1927, and together they had three sons; Cornelius died in 1939. Two years later, Maria married Bernhard Buhler and four children followed. Bernhard died in 1977.

Maria was devoted to her family and was active in her community as a blanket maker. She frequently visited to the ill and was a volunteer in women’s groups. She was known as Grandma wherever she went. A true matriarch, Maria died surrounded by her large family in 2002 at the age of 96.

The Bueckerts emigrated from Russia to Canada in 1899. They homesteaded in the Old Colony Mennonite village of Edenburg, Saskatchewan near Aberdeen. Elizabeth was born in Edenburg in 1905 and attended the Mennonite German school there.

When she was about 12-13 years of age she moved with her parents to the Mennonite village of Neuanlage, south of Hague. It is there that she met her future husband Abram C. Fehr, whom she married in 1923. Elizabeth and Abram had a small farm, and Abram worked as a blacksmith.

In 1933, the Fehrs moved to Alberta looking for work, they only experienced many hardships there. They were found starving in Edmonton, trying to make it back to Saskatchewan. The local city police and community members took them in, clothed and fed them, and helped them on their way. They made it back to farm at Hague, and Abram returned to blacksmithing and even tried his hand at dentistry.

In spite of all the hard times she faced in life, Elizabeth remained a woman with a strong faith in God, a resilient in spirit, and compassion for those who were poor and suffering. She died in 1983 at the age of 77.

Justina was an amazing lady who began her life in a simlin (a sod house dug into the ground) in southern Manitoba. She married Benjamin Goertzen in 1893 and moved to Saskatchewan with him in 1899.

In 1915, Benjamin was called by the church to be the Vorsteher, the man put in charge of conducting the business dealings of the colony, including collecting money for the poor.

Some years later, and due to the position he had held as Vorsteher, Benjamin was chosen to travel to Mexico to explore the possibility of relocating some colonists there. In 1927, the Goertzens moved there, but suffered much adversity, even being attacked by outlaws. After Benjamin died, Justina moved back to Gruenfeldt with her six youngest children.

 Justina made important contributions to her community. She was instrumental in finding new land for some Mennonites who were living on the road allowances because they owned no property. Her idea was that these people could gain their dignity back, if only they had somewhere that they could call their own. Justina managed to negotiate a deal with the municipality and a number of mined gravel pits were given to these families to move onto.