Artist Laurie Swim Sews up a Storm

Artist Laurie Swim Sews up a Storm
In this quilt Laurie Swim used hand-dyed threads, eyelash yarns, and snippets of fabric to capture the local vegetation. The scene could be any beach on Nova Scotia’s southern shore looking out on water

Laurie typically documents the tranquility of the seaside towns she knows so well and the heritage of the fishing trade that lured her ancestors to first come to the region. But the ocean can be fickle, and she’s often called upon to document the history of calamities at sea. For her native Lockeport, she wanted to tell the story of a horrific storm that tore into the village and its inhabitants in 1961. Laurie can still remember the tragedy that occurred the day when three fishing vessels were lost at sea. For a millennium project, she honored the 17 fishermen that were killed in the storm in a 10×10-foot quilt using snapshots provided by their families surrounded by a storm-at-sea pattern frame.