07/28/2023
Hello all,
We finally completed our first restoration quilt. In one of my earlier post this year, I included a few pictures of this old quilt. There was lots of planning as to how we were going to fix this quilt, and then finding the hidden quilt under the old backing, added a few extra steps, in what to do with the pieces that could be salvaged.
We choose the best of the squares, from the hidden quilt, stabilized them with fusible stabilizer, and hand stitched them together. Phyllis does really nice hand stitching. 🤩 I don’t have the patience for those little stitches. 😤Once the hand stitching was done, we reinforced it with another pice of fusible stabilizer. The completed piece came out to be a 20 1/2” X 20 1/2”. Nice size Wall Hanging. I think our customer is planning on framing it.
For the main quilt, we asked the customer for a couple pair of her old jeans, that we could add to her dad’s quilt. We felt that using her own jeans, to her dads jeans, would add a settle-mental meaning and makes the quilt more special for her. We cut small patches, from the two different pair she provided us and put them on areas that we were concerned about, that might separate or create a hole in the quilt with future use or washing. Using a blanket stitch all the way around the top of the patch, securing it well, so not to fray and protect the original area. We also secured the back of the quilt top, with some fusible stabilizer, to help the old jean fabrics stability. Once the front was completed, it was time to attach the new backing. It was a velvet like material. Heavy and soft. We matched the two half’s together, so that it looked like one continuous piece. This was a little more difficult because of the material, but I think we did a pretty good job meeting the two sides together. The original quilt was Hand Tied together, and we found a skein of yarn, that was very very close in color, to the original on used, so we got down on our hands and knees to complete the last step in restoring this quilt. I was proud of our completed work. We are sure she will get many more years out of this settle-mental quilt and we were glad to have the chance to make it look almost the same, by adding her jeans to stabilize it and make it stronger for all the future use.
