In colonial America, people generally covered their beds with decorative quilts resembling those of the lands from which the quitters had come. Wealthy and socially prominent settlers made quilts of the English type, cut from large lengths of cloth of the same color and texture rather than stitched together from smaller pieces. They made these until the advent of the Revolutionary War in 1775, when everything English came to be frowned upon.
Among the whole-cloth quilts made by these wealthy settlers during the early period are those now called linsey-woolseys. This term was usually applied to a fabric of wool and linen used in heavy clothing and quilted petticoats worn in the wintertime. Despite the name, linsey-woolsey bedcovers did not often contain linen. Rather, they were made of a top layer of woolen or glazed worsted wool fabric, consisting of smooth, compact yarn from long wool fiber dyed dark blue, green, or brown with a bottom layer of a coarser woolen material, either natural or a shade of yellow. The filling was a soft layer of wool which had been cleaned and separated and the three layers were held together with decorative stitching done with homespun linen thread. Later, cotton thread was used for this purpose. The design of the stitching was often a simple one composed of interlocking circles or crossed diagonal lines giving a diamond
pattern.
This type of heavy, warm, quilted bedcover was so large that it hung to the floor. The corners are cut out at the foot of the cover so that the quilt fit snugly around the tall four-poster, beds of the 1700's, which differed from those of today in that they were shorter and wider; they were short because people slept in a semi-sitting position with many bolsters or pillows, and wide, because each bed often slept three or more. The linsey-woolsey covering was found in the colder regions of the country because of the warmth it afforded. There was no central heating and most edrooms did not have fireplaces. 【題組】48. The term "linsey-woolsey" originally meant fabric used primarily in ______.
(A) quilts (B) sheets (C) clothing (D) pillows
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