by Joanna Dermenjian | Feb 6, 2024 | Article, Labels, Red Cross, Research
In the April 1987 issue of ‘Canada Quilts’, a letter to the editor was published from a British woman, Pauline Adams, who was looking for information about quilts made in Canada during the Second World War, that had been shipped to Britain. Pauline wrote: “There seem...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Dec 11, 2023 | Article, Artifacts, Research
In October, on CBC Gem (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s digital video streaming service), I viewed a beautiful documentary directed by and starring filmmaker Mary Galloway, entitled ‘The Cowichan Sweater: Our Knitted Legacy’. In the 1980’s, I lived for...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Nov 10, 2023 | Article, Artifacts, Children, History, Research
I made a discovery last year on Carrie Lord’s Instagram account called @homefronthistory. On March 17, 2022, she posted about war stamp corsages, called ‘Warsages’. Carrie has several in her collection of fabulous American home front WW2 collectibles. I had just...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Sep 3, 2023 | Article, History, Red Cross
I am often asked what we know about how Canadian women went about completing the work of producing over 50,000,000 items for the war effort during WWII. Where did they meet, how did they organize, who was in charge, did they work on an assembly line, did they work to...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Aug 30, 2023 | Article, History, Research
This week, after finding the 1941 image of an underground hospital in London in wartime (posted on my IG account), I decided to look for more references to quilts in British newspapers. I found the article above in the Western News in Cardiff, Wales, dated August...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Jun 27, 2023 | Article, History, Research
One of my interests in considering Canadian women’s wartime charitable work in textiles, is the multigenerational practice of women sewing and knitting in wartime. In a recent display I did for Quilts Kingston 2023, I demonstrated briefly how three women in Kingston...
