Free Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them by Marie D. Webster, Rosalind W. Perry Page B

black thread, is quilted the name “Indiana Wreath,” and all the stitchery of top and quilting is the very perfection of quilt making.
    The beautiful white quilts that are treasured as relics of past industry by their fortunate owners deserve special mention. They are rare because nowadays no one will expend the large amount of time necessary to complete one. The foundation of such a quilt is fine white muslin, or fine homespun and woven linen, with a very thin interlining. The beauty of the quilt depends upon the design drawn for the quilting and the fine stitches with which the quilting is done. There is usually a special design planned for these white quilts which includes a large central panel or pattern, with smaller designs for the corners embodying some of the ideas of the central panel. Around these decorative sections the background is so closely quilted as to resemble a woven fabric. This smooth, even background throws the principal designs into low relief. After the entire quilt isquilted and removed from the frames, the main design is frequently further accentuated by having all the most prominent features, such as the leaves and petals of flowers, stuffed. To accomplish this tiny holes are made on the wrong side of each section of the design and cotton is pushed in with a large needle until the section is stuffed full and tight. This tedious process is followed until every leaf and petal stands out in bold relief.
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    POPPY DESIGN
    This is applied patchwork and therefore much more easily made than pieced work; very simple quilting gives prominence to the design
    The fashion which has prevailed for many years of dressing beds all in white has no doubt caused the destruction of many beautiful quilts. The white quilts that have been preserved are now considered too valuable to be subjected to hard wear. The most exquisite ones were made in the last of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.
    It was the rage for white bed coverings that shortened the lives of many old pieced and patched quilts of good colouring. The “Country Contributor” tells of her experiences in dressing up the white beds:
    “I remember with regret the quilts I wore out, using them white side up in lieu of white Marseilles spreads. The latter we were far too poor to own;the ‘tufted’ ones had worn out; and I loathed the cheap ‘honeycombed’ cotton things we were forced to use unless we were going to be frankly ‘poor’ and cover our beds with plain patchwork, made up hurriedly and quilted in simple ‘fans’ in plebeian squares, as poor folk who haven’t time for elegant stitches did theirs. So I used the old quilts, making their fine stitches in intricate patterns serve for the design in a ‘white spread,’ turning the white muslin lining up. A beautiful white spread it made, too, I realize now, more fully than I did then, though I now would know much better than to turn the wonderful appliqué stars and flowers and wheels from view. Strange, is it not, that we relinquish so much of life’s best joy and pleasure before we know what actually is good?” This fashion prevails to-day, in some instances insisted upon for sanitary reasons, but it has lost to us many of the finest examples of quilting that existed because where there were no coloured patterns to relieve the white expanse, the quilting had to be perfect. If you have a white quilt treasure it, for competent quilters are no longer numerous and few there are who can reproduce it.
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CHAPTER V
How Quilts Are Made
    I T IS only in comparatively recent years that many articles of wearing apparel and house furnishings have been manufactured outside the home. One after another, spinning, weaving, shoemaking, candlemaking, tailoring, knitting, and similar tasks have been taken from the homekeeper because the same articles can be made better and cheaper elsewhere. The housewife still keeps busy, but is occupied with tasks more to her