Quilt Repair Chronicle Week 1

Please recall from last week’s article that I’m undertaking to repair a nearly 70 year old quilt.  As with most of my projects, I have WAY underestimated the scope of this repair.  I find myself wondering what my grandmothers would’ve done if faced with this.  I doubt they would have had such a question because they would no doubt have conducted repairs along the way, instead of waiting until holes worked their way all the way through the quilt and batting poked its way out.

But I can’t go back – I say that a lot, you know.  You can never go back, you can only deal with what’s in front of you. 

Okay, first question – what to use for patches.  I don’t make my clothes, therefore I don’t create a whole lot of scraps.  And so many of the clothes we wear out are synthetic fabrics that don’t lend themselves to quilting. 

I kept remembering Matthew 9:16 that says, “No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment…” while I understand there is a deep spiritual lesson there about Jesus bringing a whole new age of grace and dispensing with the old age of the law, the literal meaning of his words seem to ring true in this situation.  It just so happens that I have a good supply of very old scraps – and I am so excited to tell you about these.

Domino Sugar Bag - it’s actually a creamy white, I’ve enhanced the photo to better highlight the faded brand name.

Back in 2016 I shared a story about my Great Aunt Willie Ward – she’d turned 100 years old in that article.  Aunt Willie was of a generation that despised waste.  She saved everything and found a use for most things.  Every time we went to Aunt Willie’s house, she tried to send us home with a car load of the stuff she’d saved.  These scraps came from her. 

There are cloth bags, even a scrap of a Domino sugar bag.  There is unbleached Domestic fabric (I think this is commonly known as muslin, however, it is always called domestic on the mountain and is a common quilting fabric).  Domestic fabric came in various grades of quality and thickness and I have several examples.

I don’t know quite what I’m going to use those bags for, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut them up for patches so I’ve opted for the Domestic.

Replacement Top over Whole Cloth Quilt

Aunt Willie also gifted me with several quilt tops – these are pieced tops that have never been quilted.  So that was a great option to cover one side of this quilt.  And it’s a very old means of salvaging a worn quilt.  In fact, I have another project waiting in the wings which is an appliqued cat quilt which wore out and was covered with a simple patchwork top and tack-quilted.  That one came from my husband’s family in Georgia. 

I especially love using one of Aunt Willie’s quilt tops on this project because it’s just the sort of thing she would’ve done.

Finally there’s the binding around the edge of the quilt.  This had apparently been replaced because it was  a poly-cotton blend of fabric which is too modern for this quilt.  Also, it is in really good condition, and the binding is usually the first part of a quilt to wear out.  As I began looking at the machined stitches that attached it, they were tight and sound while the surrounding fabric was loose and worn so I opted to just cut it away and save more of the original fabric.

And while it seems precious little, that’s my progress for the week!  I have patches cut and pinned in place; I’ve located and sized the replacement top and cleaned out the lumpy batting the surrounded the tears and edges.   We’ll see where we get to next week…