Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them - Marie D. Webster

CHARTER OAK

With the American eagle in the border

PUFFED QUILT OF SILK

This is a very popular pieced quilt, composed of carefully saved bits of silks and velvets

Quilting is usually paid for by the amount of thread used, no consideration being given to the amount of time expended on the work. A spool of cotton thread, such as is found in every dry-goods store, averaging two hundred yards to the spool, is the universal measure. The price charged is more a matter of locality than excellence of workmanship. A certain price will prevail in one section among all quilters there, while in another, not far removed, two or three times that price will be asked for the same work. When many of the old quilts, now treasured as remembrances of our diligent and ambitious ancestors, were made, one dollar per spool was the usual price paid for quilting. However, as the number of quilters has decreased, the price of quilting has increased, until as much as five dollars per spool is now asked in some parts of the country. Even at the advanced prices, it is exceedingly difficult to find sufficient quilters to complete the many pieced and appliqué quilts being made.

After the space of some twelve inches, which is as far as the quilter can reach conveniently, has been quilted, the completed portion is rolled up on the side of the frame nearest the quilter. From the other side another section is then unrolled and marked for quilting, and quilted as far as the worker can reach. Thus quilting and rolling are continued until the whole quilt is gone over, after which it is taken from the frame and the edges neatly bound with a narrow piece of bias material, either white or of some harmonizing colour. Since all of the stitches are taken entirely through the quilt, the design worked into the top is repeated on the lining, so that the back makes a white spread of effective pattern in low relief. Very often the back or reverse side is as beautiful as the top, and many lovely quilts have ended their years of service as white counterpanes during that period when the vogue for white beds reigned. Now, however, owners are glad to display them in all their gorgeousness, and they no longer masquerade as white bedspreads.