Quilts are a common style of homemade bed covering. They consist of three parts – a top, a back, and some sort of stuffing material. The quilting comes in when the top is attached to the back, through the stuffing, by many tiny stitches. Comforters or "tied quilts" have the same three parts, but they are attached to each other by means of larger knots of yarn.
The excitement of quilts comes from the ways in which the top is decorated, and the patterns of stitches that can make up the quilting. Tops may be plain, they may have cloth designs appliqued on them, or they may be pieced together from many different bits of cloth. Many of the designs used in piecing a quilt are traditional, and can have such colorful, nostalgic names as "Rocky Road to Dublin," "Grandma's Flower Garden," or "The Log Cabin."
In the United States, women of many different cultural heritages have been quilting for generations. Many African American women create their quilts with a freedom of improvisation in form and color that some scholars trace back to a shared West African aesthetic sense.
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