My dad's mom and my mother both made quilts. In the winter sometimes we'd get snowed in for a week or more at a time. (8 people in a small house) When that happened mom would set up an assembly line operation with one person sorting, one pressing, two cutting, one sewing, another pressing. Our old farm house wasn't much once the termites got done so it was cold and drafty. We made quilts with old dresses, jeans, cordory(sp?), and tied them. She said that she had to keep us busy so that we wouldn't drive her crazy. We always kept warm. Then when I grew up, there were so many beautiful "store-bought" things that I got away from it. Only in the last couple of years have I gotten back into quilting but of course everything has changed now---rotary cutters instead of scissors, rulers instead of cereal box templates, great machines that do more than a straight stitch, books, etc.
Mom (a quilter from the hills of Kentucky) loved to hand-piece, hand-quilt her quilts and the "good" ones were done like that. The everyday, utility quilts that we used on our beds were tied. I love them all, the hand quilted, machine quilted, the tied ones, the pieced, the appliqued, the pre-printed.