ther pillows,
linen sheets, tablecloths, and napkins, ten blankets, and three
quilts. How much of this store of household linens was part of his
wife's wedding dower is not stated.

[Illustration: CONVENTIONAL APPLIQUE

The designs are buttonholed around. Colours: soft green
and rose. This quilt is over 100 years old]

[Illustration: SINGLE TULIP

Colours: red and yellow. Seventy-five years old]

The early settlers in Virginia and the Carolinas were mostly English
of the better class, who had been landed proprietors with considerable
retinues of servants. As soon as these original colonists secured a
firm foothold, large estates were developed on which the manners and
customs of old England were followed as closely as possible. Each
plantation became a self-supporting community, since nearly all the
actual necessities were produced or manufactured thereon. The loom
worked ceaselessly, turning the wool, cotton, and flax into household
commodities, and even the shoes for both slave and master were made
from home-tanned leather. For their luxuries, the ships that carried
tobacco and rice to the English markets returned laden with books,
wines, laces, silverware, and beautiful house furnishings of every
description.

In the colonial plantation days of household industry quilts, both
patchwork and plain, were made in considerable numbers. Quilts were
then in such general use as to be considered too commonplace to be
described or even mentioned. Consequently, we are forced to depend for
evidence of their existence in those days on bills of sale and
inventories of auctions. These records, however, constitute an
authority which cannot be questioned.

In 1774 Belvoir, the home of the Fairfax family, one of the largest
and most imposing of houses of Virginia, was sold and its contents
were put up at auction. A partial list of articles bought at this sale
by George Washington, then Colonel Washington, and here given, will
show the luxury to which the Southern planter was accustomed: "A
mahogany shaving desk, settee bed and furnishings, four mahogany
chairs, oval glass with gilt frame, mahogany sideboard, twelve chairs,
and three window curtains from dining-room. Several pairs of andirons,
tongs, shovels, toasting forks, pickle pots, wine glasses, pewter
plates, many blankets, pillows, bolsters, and _nineteen coverlids_."

[Illustration: DAISY QUILT

For a child's bed]

It was customary in