I do think some women used to buy yardage for quilts, not just scraps. Of course most of the quilts made during the Depression were scraps. But I have an old book (my first quilt book actually, bought second hand), published in 1964, that focuses on quilts made from 1840's to about 1920's. Most of the quilts are made from only three or four fabrics. The quilts are different sizes than what we generally make today, like 70"x85" being a "queen", so I guess the beds were smaller back then too.