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could pay when they’re done” she said. “They may not get finished.”
Mrs. Thornhill can make a quilt-top in one summer. She makes it from calico remnants and bleached muslin. Some of her favorite patterns are the Lone Star, tulip, Dresden plate, Jacob’s Ladder, and the Star of Bethlehem. "I made it before I knew its name,” she said of the latter. “I called it a double diamond. I just like to quilt.”
She taught a class two years ago at the extension office but found herself learning as much from her students as they did from her. They brought in their quilt tops and showed her what they had been doing. “You think you know a little something, but when you get out you find out you’re not so smart,” she said of her teaching experience.
It was pretty obvious Mrs. Thornhill wasn’t quilting to make money. She just seemed to like to keep her hands busy. She remembered the comment of a friend in Culpeper who quilts, a career woman. “When you come home weary from listening to all that jabber, you quilt for half an hour and you feel rested,” Mrs. Thornhill promised.
On the road to Luray, old times have one piece of advice regarding quilts: buy cotton, it’s warmer than nylon.
Those crazy quilts at the souvenir stands display some of the most flashy color combinations around and there are chenille bedspreads to go with them embroidered with peacocks and tigers and other exotic creatures. At the end of the tourist season, the last quilt could be bargained below $50 in some places, but these are machine manufactured and sometimes synthetic fabrics.
Handmade old quilts can usually be bought by the stack at a good price at estate sales. The cold peruse John Walker Jenkins’ ads looking for “various bed linens” and know it might be the auction to go to.
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