bunbytes

Nice story and great memories! How wonderful that you have a part of her life she enjoyed and you have taken quilting. What a tribute!

IBQUILTIN

I remember watching my Grandmother card cotton and pat it ever so carefully over a piece of muslin to use in her quilts. Its one of the reasons I started quilting myself. It just fascinated me. Fortunately, I've never had to card any of my own. It was a long and painstaking task.

Fran Foss

They used real sheeps wool and used these big brushes to clean and fluff up these chunks of wool. My Mom used to do that when I was little and she would have these piles of nice fluffy see through wool blocks. I still have one of her quilts but don't know how a person would wash that wool. I still have the brushes too. Looking back now that was a lot of work.
Fran

crafty pat

I remember my grandmother picking the cotton and getting it down on the floor to card it. Remembering how it was done it must have been back breaking work.

GramMER

Hey! I am not that old and I remember watching quilters card the cotton. In fact, when I was in high school Home Economics classes, we had to do that for one of our projects.

My daddy grew the cotton and we sometimes saved some of it for quilt batting (before it went to the gin). Does anyone remember the gins? Yes, the quilting was much closer then, and there were sometimes "stickers" in the cotton when the carding was insufficient. Little pieces of the boll might be left and show through white fabric. Quilts were heavy when they were wet in the wash, but they lasted. I still have five or six my grandmother and her sisters made stored somewhere... the story of my life! Storage, always storage... (sigh).

Loretta

This is something I have never heard of.

Daylesewblessed

Remember the gins? I live next door to a cotton grader.

QM

I will emphasize that carding is tedious work. Before I quilted, I spun, wove and knitted raw wool. By comparison, quilting is really speedy. Yes, I am glad I don't have to card my batts.

carolynjo

As the cotton was carded on the carders, the quilter pulled the flattened, straightened cotton fiber off and laid it onto the backing. When the next batch came off the carder, the quilter pushed that batch as close as she could get it to the first batch, and so on. When there was enough cotton spread onto the backing, then the top was laid onto the backing and the whole thing was basted, usually on quilting frames that lowered from the ceiling. The frames could be hoisted up to the ceiling until the quilt was ready to be quilted and then it was time for a quilting bee! She would send out the word and folks from miles around would come and help her quilt the quilt. With all the neighbors helping, frequently, the quilt would be finished in a day. When lumps appeared in the quilt as it was washed, it meant that the quilting was not close enough together to hold the "pats" of cotton together. Hope this helps.

Joy Higdon

I was born in 1937. My mom had to use whatever she could get for batting. Sometimes it came out of a bed mattress. It would be lumped up. The children would hand pull the lumps until we came up with a smooth batting. Not so bad, just a way of life, it was all we knew so we accepted it. Can't imagine a youth today asked to do something so mundane. Actually I look back a lot and remember the layed-back lifestyle and miss it very much. Such a wealth of knowledge we learned sitting around the feet of several ladies as they helped each other quilt. The tools they used were everyday items that were around the house, like a string and piece of chalk to mark fans and scollops.