The women sat around the huge quilt and stitched and stitched, contesting with each other for the neatest, shortest stitches.

One woman might stitch for up to three weeks on one garment.

Second, the women would stitch cotton scraps together into patchwork jackets, coats and futon covers.

To finish the tipi covering, women laid the tanned hides side by side and stitched them together.

I saw men and women stitched and in casts, one man walking slowly because of a painful back injury caused when a steer fell on him.

Then the women dealt with the wound in his back, before cleaning and stitching the shallow bite from the hound.

By varying the placement of the jagged images on a bear-paw pattern, an Amish woman from Indiana stitched a quilt that seems awash in flowers.

The tall young woman sat by the fire and stitched skins, her movements deft.

Doing "contour quilting" by hand, the women stitched waves into the river, clouds into the sky and smoke rising from chimneys.

The women had stitched a beautiful pattern of roses on the blanket.