On a May Saturday more than 100 years ago, friends and family gathered at the home of Willis Willocks of Friendsville, Tennessee, to celebrate his 35th birthday. After enjoying a three-course noon meal and presenting Willocks with his gifts, the guests spent the afternoon sewing quilt squares, “making him [Willocks] a real nice quilt, each square bearing the name of the giver,” The Maryville Times reported in its May 12, 1920, edition.
The archives of this and other regional newspapers are full of similar snippets: a December 1919 meeting of the Ladies Aid and Missionary Society in Waynesville, North Carolina, where an all-day “quilting” yielded six quilts for the Baulfour Orphanage; a “fine day” in April 1890 where the men gathered to work at John Shuler’s place in Deep Creek, while their wives spent the day quilting; a young people’s social near Maryville, Tennessee, in February 1894 where, after spending the day quilting with the older women, the girls invited the young men to “help shake the cat” — a tradition in which a cat was placed in the center of the quilt as the girls shake its edges. The direction of the cat’s jump was said to indicate which girl would be the next to be married.
