A dear friend entrusted me with repairing a quilt that her ancestors had made, so it would be a useable snuggle quilt to hand down to her daughter. I was honored to have this special job. Upon evaluation, I understood that this was not a quilt "restoration" but rather a repair. The original quilt, while a treasure, was constructed in an interesting manner. Kind of a haphazard patchwork, done on muslin squares, almost foundation pieced if that makes sense. The fabrics used were all treasured memories, some cottons, flannels, even some knits here and there.
The muslin squares were then all pieced together but no backing was added. A thin binding encased it all, and the binding was wearing away. Here's what the back of the quilt was like...
There were 10 or 12 places in the quilt top where patches were worn away like this one...
At the wise advice of my friend Diann, I created patches with appropriate scraps from my stash, like this vintage feedsack, and zigzagged them on top to match the other pieces of the quilt....
After I was done, I had a hard time spotting some of my repairs! A good thing I think. I took the whole repaired top to Diann for some long arm magic, using a lightweight wool batting and an aqua floral wideback. I bound the whole thing with the same aqua floral.
The quilt has been lovingly presented to it's new owner and the word I got is that she loves it! yay!
4 comments:
What a great job of repairing the vintage quilt... not an easy thing to do..looks fantastic..
Good for you! I have several vintage quilts with various repair needs and they pretty much intimidate me! I may have ruined the first I tried to work with...ugh!
What a treasure!! That is amazing work Ellyn!
You have done a truly amazing repair girl! I think it was just a coverlet that some used to make using patchwork. It looks beautiful! Well done girl. I think you were very brave.
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