Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an act of sexual intercourse.

1804

‘The Journey to Camp’ in S. Foster Damon Yankee Doodle (1959) 9: Moll began to squimp and squirm, / And vow’d she’d have a quilting. / She vow’d she’d have it up and down, / And make the glasses rattle; / For brother John had been to town, / And was not kill’d in battle.

2. a thrashing, a beating.

1827		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 29 Apr. 941/1: [T]he quilting Bob had previously received, rendered him in a great measure incapable of taking advantage of his adversary's distress.
1836		T. Haliburton Clockmaker I 156: He helped me once to ginn a blue-nose a proper handsum quiltin.
1843		T. Haliburton Sam Slick in England I 190: The only cure is a rael good quiltin.
1845		R.S. Surtees Hillingdon Hall I 284: If I had ’ounds, I’d [...] fly to ’Merica, to Jones of Faire Knowe, and give him a good quiltin’ for his imperance to me.
1853		T. Haliburton Sam Slick’s Wise Saws II 36: ‘Got what?’ sais I. ‘Do tell.’ ‘A rael handsome quilting,’ sais she.
1860		T. Haliburton Season Ticket 297: I do owe you a quiltin’.
1885		Sat. Rev. (London) 20 June 809/2: I will give him such a quilting as will cause him bitterly to remember the consequences .
1907		Brisbane Courier 29 May 6/3: Billy was giving him an old man quilting.
1928		L. Mackay My Oul’ Town 115: We used to have quiltin’s an’ dances at the cross-roads, an’ rattlin’ good times at wakes an’ churnin’s.
1945		J.B. McMillan ‘New American Lexical Evidence’ in AS XX:1 112: Quilting, vbl. n. Whipping, flogging.