26 January 2010

Making Something From Nothing

Wow, what an overwhelming response. I didn't think there would be that many of you wanting to see repair work on this quilt.

I do want to point out that this is a quilt that I personally made so I was fully aware of where the bias is located in those blocks. I had forgotten, however, that the strings were sewn to a fabric foundation and the foundation was left in the quilt. I now use the Kabinet Sandwich Paper (I get it at Sam's Club) that Bonnie Hunter talks about on her site and then I remove the paper before assembling the quilt. Go to Bonnie's String-X site and look at how the individual block is made and you will see what bias edges I am talking about: the corner triangles and some edges of the strings (that's why I foundation piece them).

It is quite interesting to re-visit an old quilt that you have made and to see how the fabrics and thread is holding up. This one has it's surprises.

Okay, then. This is a pieced quilt with the foundations left inside, a medium loft polyester batting and the backing was all the same uber-busy fabric pieced down the center (I have a bolt of this stuff that I picked up at a garage sale.) It is quilted on my DSM in a very large meander.

Little Sister just bundled it up and shipped it to me as is because she was afraid if she did anything to it further damage would ensue. The first thing I had to do was to stabilize the damaged areas and wash it. Because of my allergies, I can not work too closely or for very long on something that has been around animal dander/hair. I pinned the dickens out of both areas so nothing would shift and then put it through the wash -- twice.

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This is not an heirloom quilt by any means. It was made to be used and loved. What I do on this quilt is not what I would recommend doing on an heirloom quilt. YMMV

3 comments:

  1. Ohhh my. You do have your work cut out for you. I see a very old orange/red fabric with yellow flowers. Is that from the 70's or earlier?

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  2. Weeeeellll, we shall follow along and see how this goes. I did a quickie string-strips thing with Christmas scraps using old phone book pages (as Bonnie suggests) and it worked very well. Keep us posted.
    Marne

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  3. Thing is... the storyline behind this quilt now makes it "heirloom" in my personal dictionary. I mean, I'm just sayin' because that's how I roll. The story makes it magic.

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