A great variety of fabrics were produced: "striped woolen, wool plaided, cotton striped, linen, wool-birdseye, cotton filled with wool, linsey, M's and O's, cotton Indian dimity, cotton jump stripe, linen filled with tow, cotton striped with silk, Roman M., janes twilled, huccabac, broadcloth, counter-pain, birdseye diaper, Kirsey wool, barragon, fustian, bed-ticking, herring-box, and shalloon."
In non-importation days Mrs. Washington even made the cloth for two of her own gowns, using cotton striped with silk, the latter being obtained from the ravellings of brown silk stockings and crimson damask chair covers.
The housewife believed in good cheer and an abundance of it, and the larders at Mount Vernon were kept well filled. Once the General protested to Lund Washington because so many hogs had been killed, whereupon the manager replied that when he put up the meat he had expected that Mrs. Washington would have been at home and that he knew there would be need for it because her
"charitable disposition is in the same proportion as her meat house."
She had a swarm of relatives by blood and marriage and they visited her long and often. The Burwells, the Bassetts, the Dandridges and all the rest came so frequently that hardly a week passed that at least one of them did not sleep beneath the hospitable roof. Even her stepmother paid her many visits and, what is more, was strongly urged by the General to make the place her permanent home. When Mrs. Washington was at home during the Revolution her son and her daughter-in-law spent most of their time there. After the Revolution her two youngest grandchildren resided at Mount Vernon, and the two older ones, Elizabeth and Martha, were often there, as was their mother, who married as her second husband Doctor Stuart, a man whom Washington highly esteemed.
It would be foolish to deny that Mrs. Washington did not take pleasure in the honors heaped upon her husband or that she did not enjoy the consideration that accrued to her as First Lady of the Land. Yet public life at times palled upon her and she often spoke of the years of the presidency as her "lost days." New York and Philadelphia, she said, were "not home, only a sojourning. The General and I feel like children just released from school or from a hard taskmaster.... How many dear friends I have left behind! They fill my memory with sweet thoughts. Shall I ever see them again? Not likely unless they come to me, for the twilight is gathering around our lives. I am again fairly settled down to the pleasant duties of an old-fashioned Virginia-housekeeper, steady as a clock, busy as a bee, and cheerful as a cricket."
That she did not overdraw her account of her industry is borne out by a Mrs. Carrington, who, with her husband, one of the General's old officers, visited Mount Vernon about this time. She wrote: