lining
(often another expanse of patchwork), with layers of wool or cotton
wadding between, and the edges were basted all around. Four bars of
wood, about ten feet long, "the quiltin'-frame," were placed at the four
edges, the quilt was sewed to them with stout thread, the bars crossed
and tied firmly at corners, and the whole raised on chairs or tables to
a convenient height. Thus around the outstretched quilt a dozen quilters
could sit running the whole together with fanciful set designs of
stitching. When about a foot on either side was wholly quilted, it was
rolled upon its bar, and the work went on; thus the visible quilt
diminished, like Balzac's Peau de Chagrin, in a united and truly
sociable work that required no special attention, in which all were
facing together and all drawing closer together as the afternoon passed
in intimate gossip. Sometimes several quilts were set up. I know of a
ten days' quilting-bee in Narragansett in 1752.

In early days calicoes were not common, but every one had woollen
garments and pieces, and the quilts made of these were of grateful
warmth in bleak New England. All kinds of commonplace garments and
remnants of decayed gentility were pressed into service in these quilts:
portions of the moth-eaten and discarded uniforms of militia-men,
worn-out flannel sheets dyed with some brilliant home-dye, old coat and
cloak linings, well-worn petticoats. A magnificent scarlet cloak worn by
a lord mayor of London and brought to America by a member of the Merritt
family of Salisbury, Massachusetts, went through a series of adventures
and migrations, and ended its days as small bits of vivid color casting
a grateful glory and variety on a patchwork quilt in the Saco valley of
Maine. To this day at vendues or sales of old country households in New
England, there will be handed out great rolls of woollen pieces to be
used for patchwork quilts or rag carpets, and they find purchasers.

These woollen quilts had a thin wadding, and were usually very closely
quilted, so they were quite flat. They were called "pressed quilts." An
old farm wife said to me in New Hampshire, "Girls won't take the trouble
to make pressed quilts nowadays, it's as much as they'll do to tack a
puff," that is, make a light quilt with thick wadding only tacked
together from front to back, at regular intervals. A pressed quilt which
I saw was quilted in inch squares. Another had a fan-pattern with
sunflower leaf border; anot