It was really ridiculous, our way of making raids upon what remained of our fine bed-linen, pillow-shams, and slips, for garments of finer texture than our own home-woven cloth. I well remember that once, when I stepped into a friend’s room, her very first words were, “This is the last bleached, seamless bed-sheet I’ve got, and now I must cut it up for garments!” I doubt very much if a fine sheet could have been found in any house in our settlement when the war closed. Perhaps there was not one in the blockaded South.
Fine white pillow-shams were cut up and made into white waists, to wear with our heavy home-made skirts in the hot summer. Sometimes a family would happen to have a bundle of scraps of blue striped bed-ticking, which would be divided around among the neighboring girls. We would ravel it all up, taking care to save every blue thread (which was a fast color) to embroider flowers on the front, collar, and cuffs of our white waists, made of pillow-shams and slips; and we did think them beautiful and prized them all the more highly because of the narrow pass to which we had arrived for fine material to tide us over till our cause should be won; and if we used up all the fine sheets, pillow-slips, and shams of ante-bellum days for our wear, soft homespun, home-woven sheets took their place.
Cloth that was called thirded was woven for sheets and pillow-slips. Two threads of warp would be passed through the reeds of the sley for all plain or twilled cloth. For single sleyed cloth one thread only was passed through the sley-reeds. For cloth woven “thirded” the weaver would begin by drawing two threads through the first reeds of the sley and one thread through the next reeds, two threads again, and then one, thus alternating the width of the warp two and one. When filled in with soft fine-spun filling, this stuff was soft and yielding, and easy to handle in the wash.
Some real nice towels were woven of the thirded cloth, and edged with wide or narrow blue borders of our home-made indigo, as that was ever a fast color. A fringe would be formed at both ends of the towel by raveling out an inch or so of the woof; they had to be inspected closely to note the difference between them and those bought in the usual manner.