Ohio about 80 years ago.
Colours: red, pink, and two shades of green]

[Illustration: ROSE OF SHARON

Made in Indiana about 65 years ago. It has a wool
interlining instead of the usual cotton]

The simple needs of the family are almost entirely supplied by the
women of the household. They spin, weave, and make the few plain
garments which they and their families wear. Day after day, year in
and year out, these isolated women must fill in the hours with little
tasks connected with home life. As in many other instances where
women are dependent upon their own resources for amusement, they have
recourse to their needles. Consequently, it is in the making of
quilts, coverlets, and allied forms of needlework that these mountain
women spend their hours of recreation.

The quilts, both pieced and patched, that are made in mountaineers'
cabins have a great variety of designs. Many designs have been used
again and again by each succeeding generation of quilters without any
variation whatever, and have well-known names. There are also designs
that have been originated by a proficient quilt maker, who has made
use of some common flower as the basis for her conventional design. It
has not been a great many years since the materials used in making the
mountain quilts were dyed as well as woven in the home. The dyes were
homemade from common roots and shrubs gathered from nearby woods and
meadows. Blue was obtained from wild indigo; brown from walnut hulls;
black from the bark of scrub-oak; and yellow from laurel leaves.
However, the materials which must be purchased for a quilt are so
meagre, and the colours called "oil boiled"--now used to dye
calico--are so fast, that the mountain women seldom dye their own
fabrics any more. They bring in a few chickens or eggs to the nearest
village, and in exchange obtain a few yards of precious coloured
calico for their quilts.

Miss Bessie Daingerfield, a Kentuckian, who is in close touch with
these mountaineers, tells us what a void the quilt fills in the lives
of the lonely women of the hills: "While contemporary women out in the
world are waging feminist war, those in the mountains of the long
Appalachian chain still sit at their quilting frames and create beauty
and work wonders with patient needles. There is much beautiful and
skilful handiwork hidden away in these hills. The old women still
weave coverlets, towels, and table linen from wool from their own
sheep and