Great subject!
I remember going with my family (4 kids and parents) to a little town "down in the country" to pick up a family quilt when I was about 9 years old. It was memorable because Daddy parked at the curb in a little old town we'd never been to, on a side street, and went up a staircase on the outside of the building to an apartment on the second floor-- that was so strange to me, coming from a single level home on a big lot in a neighborhood.
He came down with a package which he put in the trunk and then we all got to go for an ice cream cone, a special treat for a family of six in those days. It was a long afternoon.
At home they opened the quilt and laid it out on their bedroom floor and oohed and aahed over it. I looked over their should at the brown and tan thing on the fllor and thought, "This is what all the hoopla is about?"
Thirty-five years later I was a quilter with an great interest in textile history, restoration, and mid 1800s quilts. That original quilt was sent to me for keeping and as I studied it and had it appraised several times, I realized I had to give it to the Colonial Williamsburg Textile Museum in Williamsburg VA. They took a brief look at it and pronounced my family quilt a 1780 or earlier Virginia quilt with linen grown in VA and English chintz in it. Someday I will reproduce it and write a book and pattern for iit.
Jan in VA