Aunt Bill Rambles — Quilts
My we shore are havin’ a early winter and I jest got to thankin’ about how hit used to be in the winter time — trying to keep enough quilts on the bed to stay. There were’nt no heat in them old bedrooms and sometimes we’d have so many quilts on us that hit wuz hard to turn over.
Lots of women would have time to piece purtty tops and then quilt ‘em, but some women what had a house full of little ‘uns didn’t have that kind of time. This quilt in the picture wuz made by jest that kind of women. She had to have kivver and had to have it soon, so she used what she had to make hit with. She found enough fertilizer sacks without letters to make the top and to save time she sewed three long pieces together and dyed them. But the lining had lettering still on the old sacks. I do believe this quilt (top and back) was dyed with walnut hulls and maybe onions. The yaller looks a little too dark for the dye to a been onions. The quiltin’ stitch is purtty good on this thick quilt, but hit wuz quilted with ball thread. When they used ball thread they couldn’t use a little needle — so they had do the best they could trying to make short stitches.
Way back yonder the family would set around the fireplace at night and pick the seeds out’n the cotton so hit could be used fer filler. Somebody told me their ma would give the chillern a tea cup and when they got hit full of seed they could quit. Why, that was too much for little ‘uns — hit’d take lots of seed to fill up a tea cup. Atter they got the seed out then they had to use what they called cards to comb the cotton and try to get it evened out to make a quilt batt.
Sack Quilt Top
I wuz a quiltin’ with some women last week and you know how we talk when a bunch of us git together. I heer’d a man down the road was gonna leave his wife and they’ve got three or four little kids. He said he couldn’t please that woman no way in the world. He said he’d stand on the front porch and pee in the yard and she didn’t lack that, so he stood in the yard and peed on the porch and she didn’t lack that neither so he’s jest gonna leave. La me!!
Well, anyway all of hit put together is country livin’.