Remembering: Under the Quilt

Remembering: Under the Quilt

I grew up knowing that when you were going to a “dress up” or public event proper ladies wore nylon hose. I learned about hosiery when playing under the quilt as my grandmother and her friends quilted at the country church. When starting a new quilt there was lots of room to play underneath the frame because they always started at the outside edges and worked toward the center, rolling up the quilt as it was quilted. Some legs under the quilt wore very opaque and unsightly hosiery. Often those legs were short and fat. Other legs wore very sheer and natural colored hosiery, almost invisible except for the seam going up the back. Those legs seemed longer and more shapely. Some seams were straight and some were rather crooked as they traveled up the back of the leg. And sometimes there were these lighter stripes–they were called runs by the quilt ladies and it was a disaster to have one. And then some legs had “knee highs”, before there really was knee high hose. I learned that if you didn’t want to mess with a girdle (that’s a whole ‘nother story) you might get by with pulling on the hose and just rolling the extra around the knee. But, before you stood up you had to adjust to make sure the top of the hose were still in the right place. After all, dresses were longer then so nobody really knew your secret—–unless you were under the quilt.