Received from another list. COLUMBIA - While man's best friend surely deserves a comfortable bed, very few dogs get historic quilts on which to lay their weary old heads. One lucky dog got just that. Fortunately, his owner discovered the value of the 1863 silk-and-velvet cradle quilt - stitched by none other than Mrs. Robert E. Lee and Mrs. Jefferson Davis to raise funds for the Confederate Soldier's Relief Fund - and the valuable handiwork was saved from the doghouse. In fact, it will be the centerpiece for tomorrow's ''Airing of the Quilts,'' an exhibit of 36 handmade quilts that will be on display in the Athenaeum, 808 Athenaeum St., between West Seventh and West Eighth streets in Columbia. ''In 1977, an elderly Nashville widow gave the quilt to a Franklin man who had come to her house to see a gun,'' said Gay Anderson, who is coordinating the quilt show for the Athenaeum. ''When he was getting ready to go, she asked him if he had a dog,'' Anderson continued. ''She said she had an old quilt she wanted to get rid of and he could use it for his dog. ''When he got home, he opened the box and found this note in it,'' she said, holding up a piece of paper. The note described the quilt as being made by the Ladies of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va. According to the book Southern Quilts: Surviving Relics of the Civil War by Nashville quilting historian Bets Ramsey, Lee - wife of the Confederacy's chief general - and Davis, wife of its president - helped stitch the quilt in 1863. ''When they realized what they had,'' Anderson said of the gun-seeker, ''they called the woman back and she said, 'No one in my family wants it. Just give it to the dog.' '' The man, in turn, gave the quilt to the Carter House in Franklin. And the dog was stuck with his old blanket.