For the past 13 years, Marilyn Peabody has been volunteering with the New Brunswick Museum. It is home to hundreds of artifacts from centuries gone by, including a quilt collection, with some dating back as far as the 18th century.
“I’m removing the dust,” says Peabody, “but I’m doing over a screen because I don’t want to damage the fabric. I just brush and I vacuum, brush and vacuum…”
This is just one of many jobs Marilyn does at the museum. She started volunteering in 2002, and since then has devoted hundreds of hours in the lab, working on quilts.
Peter Larocque is the curator at the museum. He says it takes someone with special skills to clean and preserve the quilts.
“It’s one of the top collections in Canada,” says Larocque “There is a whole training program that goes on behind the scenes, and you have to have interest. But you also have to have the abilities and the skills.”
Museum staff say having volunteers like Marilyn is a huge help when it comes to conservation.
“There’s about 400 quilts in the collection. This particular project that Marilyn was working on, there was about 275. Although I understand there’s another 100 odd coming our way soon,” says museum conservator Dee Stubbs-Lee.
Marilyn says each quilt tells a story, and she’s looking forward to learning about more of these stories that have been woven together throughout history.
Congratulations to Marilyn Peabody, our Maritimer of the Week!
If you know someone deserving of our Maritimer of the Week award, we want to hear about it.
It doesn’t matter how old they are, the nature of the good deed they’ve done, or what part of the region they live in – we want your ideas!
Please send your nomination to:
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Halifax, N.S.
B3J 2Z4
