When Grandma comes home from nursing a sick relative, she and Mary Ellen clash because Grandma takes it upon herself to organise Mary Ellen's quilting. A quilting was a "back woods" custom to announce to the community that a young lady was of an age when she could accept young men who wished to court her. Mary Ellen, however, finds the custom demeaning and is adamant that she will not participate in it. Grandma on the other hand, goes ahead and sends out the invitations to all the women folk of Waltons Mountain and the quilting does indeed go ahead. John Boy tells Mary Ellen that the quilting is a way of the women showing just how much they care about her and that she should think about the breach she is causing between both her grandmother and herself, and her grandmother and her mother.