Fixing a Loved Quilt

A very special young lady in our lives has a quilt made by her Grandmother and is was loved and loved.  Abby even knows which triangles were made from her own clothes as a little girl.  Because it was tied instead of quilted this quilt struggle to stay together.  As I took it apart I found that instead of batting an old polyester comforter from the 70's was used.  I wonder if that rough fabric aided in the destruction of the fabrics.

 I used washed muslin for the backing, an 80% cotton batting, and bleached washed muslin for the quilt sandwich.  I then put on the triangles without any borders.  I squared up the triangles by using the channel lock on the quilting machine and basting every other row.

After squaring up the rows I stitched around the most damaged triangles.  I knew that if I tried to replace them the other fabrics would just tear.
After that I stitched borders right to the quilt sandwich on the machine.



 This way I could again use the channel locks and get the straightest borders possible.  The sides aren't as      straight but hardly crooked enough to notice.



Because you would be able to see the triangle patches from the underside we chose a busy pattern with lots of points to disguise the patches.  This is a modern folk art pattern called Wilma's Garden.  It has several different sunflower and fan flowers as well as a folk art cat.

Patched triangle upper left corner

Cat's head is tilted up  in the upper left corner.

All in all we are very pleased to be able to preserve this quilt so that it can be loved, used and washed for many many years to come.  When you look at the whole quilt you can almost feel Grandma's love for her little Granddaughter.