This is my favorite definition of a quilting group:
As Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in The Minister's Wooing, quilting bees enabled one to learn "how best to keep moths out of blankets, how to make fritters of Indian corn undistinguishable from oysters, how to bring up babies by hand, how to mend a cracked teapot, how to take grease from a brocade, how to reconcile absolute decrees with free will, how to make five yards of cloth answer the purpose of six, and how to put down the Democratic party."