Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

OUR NEIGHBORS 145
Ever orderly, Aunt Betsy kept all scraps of new calico or
muslin neatly rolled up aVid put away for future use. In the
days of her activity she pieced many quilts, and their construction
was elaborate and served to fill pleasantly many a winter
evening. She had taken an orphan girl, Mary Jane Packer,
to bring up, and when the evenings grew long there was quite
certain to be a pleasant home picture of the old times beside
Aunt Betsy's wide fireplace. Supper was over, the hearth
swept, and a bright fire roaring up the great chimney; in a
cushioned chair beside a candle of her own making sat com-
fortable Aunt Betsy, and near her the young girl, Mary Jane,
each busy with patchwork. Aunt Betsy would have the paper
pattern and be cutting out the small quilt pieces for Mary
Jane to carefully sew together and join into blocks. What a
revel of color there was — sometimes pieces of plain yellow,
red, green, and blue, or prints with white background and
tiny pink roses or "shawl flowers" figured there — such a
mass of bright cotton pieces! Sometimes the "blazing star"
flashed its rays of red, blue, and green beneath the girl's needle
or it was " Irish chain " or "thirteen diamond " she put together
with great precision. I remember also the basket, compass
and "orange quarter" pattern among Aunt Betsy's pile of
nice quilts. Very pretty ones were often made from two colors,
as white and blue or red, or yellow or green joined with the
pure white. Every piece in the blocks made under Aunt Betsy's
direction had to match, all the lines being even. Besides
the patchwork quilts they made others by basting upon white
muslin strips designs in colors, as roses and leaves, with vines
cut from plain green calico running around the quilt for a border;
all these designs were hemmed down by hand with the
finest of stitches. There usually were white blocks between
the patterns sewn on the groundwork, and what fine quilting
was exhibited in such spaces! Sometimes it was done in tiny
diamonds not more than a half-inch across. When Mary Jane
married and went to her new home, Aunt Betsy gave to this
motherless girl six beautiful quilts. At last Aunt Betsy was
left alone; she did not hear the sound of her own voice save
as she called the house cat. Still she kept up her "sanitary