How an axe murder and a quilt cured my cabin fever
I’ll be spending quite a bit of time indoors alone over the next few months and I think it’ll be a bit of challenge. There’s been another time in my life when I’ve spent a lot of time indoors in my own company. A while ago, I moved to Canada with my new husband in the middle of winter. He had a job and I didn’t.
I spent a lot of time watching daytime television, trying to avoid getting electric shocks from the synthetic carpet in our ugly apartment on the main road north. The temperature was set to sauna level and we ended up keeping the sliding door to the balcony (and the sub zero climate) open to make it bearable. I roasted a chicken and set off the smoke alarm.
One source of solace was reading Canadian author Margaret Attwood’s Alias Grace. Apart from a cracking read, it felt like a way to learn about the culture of my new home and its artists. The novel is based on a real, infamous and grisly murder, where two servants killed their employer and the housekeeper of the home where they both worked. Grace and her male co-accused were tried and convicted. Grace escaped the noose largely, Attwood speculates, because the community recoiled from the unthinkable — that the demure and respectable indoor servants living in middle and upper class homes everywhere could one day take to their employers with an axe.
Domesticity, femininity and the precarious existence of the respectable poor are central to Attwood’s tale. Grace takes pride in her extensive knowledge of domestic arts. No small part of the pleasure to be derived from reading Alias Grace is in the arcane knowledge and everyday domestic rituals of Grace’s life. The novel is structured around the quintessential domestic art: quilting. Every chapter is headed up with an illustration of a traditional quilting pattern.
I found a book of quilt patterns in a bookshop within walking distance of the nylon sauna I was living in.
I had never made a quilt.
I would make a quilt. Not just any quilt. A really big quilt. And I’d sew it by hand just like Grace and her contemporaries had. What could be more in the spirit of the change I’d committed to? It was Canadian. It was the celebration of a rich tradition of people who had moved to Canada (Grace is an Irish immigrant). This was just what I needed. A project that would take lots of time, and a slow, steady dedication. Something to keep me busy every day. Something that would make me feel connected to Canada. Something that would result in a beautiful thing. I bought fabric and needles and cotton.
From then on each day, I cut out what would be over 1,000 shapes and hand stitched them together. The project kept me occupied during the months when I spent most weekdays by myself. Watching the steady progress motivated me and provided a comforting rhythm to my days.
With the cooler weather recently, I pulled the quilt out of the cupboard. When I use it, I remember that adventure and everything that came with it. I persisted in building a life in my new home. I tried new things. I joined a casting agency as an extra — the highlight was a gig in a Bollywood film that filmed in Canada. (If you watch The Hero, you’ll see my out of focus trouser legs walking past the camera.) We moved out of the apartment and into the house we’d occupy for the next three and a half years.
I left messages on every extension at the Calgary International Film Festival. I pitched up at their offices, cornered the Director over coffee, and got a volunteer job. I made new friends, saw great films and eventually got the role of Marketing and Communications Director.
Producing the quilt was like alchemy. A rubbish time was transformed into one of my most treasured possessions. When I think about it now, I realise that the catalyst was me. I made that happen. I conjured a treasure from a challenging period of my life.
The challenge and the treasure are inextricably mixed. I wouldn’t have the quilt without those disorienting months in a new city in a new country.
Faced with another few months spent largely indoors, I’m planning on taking the same approach. There are significant differences between that experience and the COVID-19 response. I’m lucky enough to have a job that I can continue to do at home, so I’m not trying to fill all or even most of my time. But I do want to enjoy some leisure time and I do want to emerge from this period with something beautiful to show for it. I’m thinking I’ll do a few smaller projects.
My first project is making this dress in this floral fabric. I spent a Sunday afternoon slowly pinning and cutting out all the pattern pieces. I’m feeling better already.
I’ve put Alias Grace on my reading list and there’s good chance I’ll be watching the miniseries again. I might do a bit of hand sewing while I enjoy it.
