Note: Christmas was a time to "make sure the house looked beautiful," with decorated Christmas tree and embroidered pillow shams, worked with portraits of the cow or one's parents, for example. "Mama knew how to put rick rack around it." Her grandmother would make beautiful quilts. She would like to make one like it before she dies. "Tree quilts" were made of leftover cloth cut in the shape of leaves. Big red pieces were cut out for apples, smaller pieces for cherries, white pieces could be flowers. Black and brown pieces were the roots. Sometimes cows or black-eyed-susies ("we called them yellow daisies") and beautiful buttercups would be represented. These beautiful counterpanes were sometimes reversable.