Ok, the curiosity was killing me, so I consulted with Madame Google (knows all, tells all). A tuffing needle is an actual thing, and might even be the awl-looking thing in the picture. I found this: “Tieing” (sometimes called “tuffing”) is when a large hand needle is used with yarn, floss, or even ribbon to “tie” the layers of the quilts together with knots. (
http://www.maryscustomquilts.com/competitors.htm) You can also buy a hand tuffing gun here:
http://www.weiku.com/products/629214...fing_Guns.html . My inner language geek says it's likely a variation of 'tufting', but I haven't found any etymology to back that up yet.
I'm going to file this under 'learn something new every day', concur that the seller is amazingly pompous, and go start dinner. :P
