During my snowbound time last week, I was able to finish the repairs to a quilt for a friend. When she first brought me the quilt in November 2013, I knew I would need to replace several of the diamonds, replace the batting, and put a new back on it.
When I unquilted it, I found more holes in the fabric than I thought there were.
As in ...253! Many of the holes were at the seams. Some of the seams had just come unsewn, and others were torn at the stitch line.
The quilt had been repaired once before. It had been hand stitched in red embroidery thread. I don't know who the repair person was, but they were skilled with a needle. The stitches were even and evenly placed. Unfortunately, a little more love and use by the family meant the need for more repairs.
My first inclination was to disect the entire thing, trim all the diamonds down a 1/2 inch, replace the ones I needed to, and reassemble the quilt. I let several people talk me out of that option. The next option was to interface the entire quilt top, which would have helped stabilize the quilt. My friend didn't like that option, and said, "Just stitch it up." One of the reasons the family loves this quilt is how soft it is. So adding interfacing would have stiffened it up, and she didn't want that.
So to repair the quilt, I utilized several different techniques. The first was to simply restitch the seams that were just loose. Since the fabric was stretched and out of "square" from years of use, I also restitched those that were just close to the seam. It altered the tumbling block pattern for some of them, but no more than other blocks were already off. That took care of many of the holes.
There were blocks that needed to be replaced as well. Most of the blocks were white or a printed green fabric. I was able to use the white that was originally on the back to cut the new white diamonds, and I found a piece of green that blended well from my stash. I also used a piece of orange fabric to replace one of the diamonds.
In the photos above, you can also see another technique I used to fix holes, torn seams, or separations in the fabric that were along a wear wrinkle in the fabric. I used a smocking stich to cover them. I tried using a darning stitch, but it wasn't wide enough to connect the pieces of fabric. By using a smocking stich, it was a little wider and the interlocking stitch made the fabric and hole a little stronger.
The final method I employed was to cut small strips of interfacing to cover holes or reinforce seams. These were used as a compromise to interfacing the entire top. It added stability to the places that needed it.
After the holes were repaired, I removed the old outer border and replaced it with a new outer border. Then I added polyester batting and a used a sheet for the new backing. The polyester batting had been gifted to me by another friend, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was 96" wide. I normally use cotton, but since the quilt's original batting was polyester, I felt comfortable using it. Since my friend really wanted a soft, worn feel, I wanted to use a fitted sheet that had a hole in it. Although it was a king size sheet, the rip was in the wrong place. So I ended up cutting the flat sheet down to size, and requilting it.
For the quilting, I just followed the basic vertical lines of the quilt. One of the reasons the top was in such poor shape, was the lack of quilting. It was only quilted with about 4 lines horizontally across the quilt. The large amounts of unquilted space meant the constant pulling on those quilting seams. Since polyester thread had been used, the fabric gave away before the thread, causing many of the holes. I'm hoping that using cotton thread and quilting it closer together will protect the quilt from some of the usage wear.
An finally, it was bound with fabric matching the outer border. Originally, it had a knife edge binding. I chose instead a bias french fold binding. Again, I'm hoping this will protect the quilt a little and add to it's remaining life. Here is the final result.
I learned quite a bit through this process. The most important of which, is that I won't fix any more quilts unless they belong to me. The exception is another quilt repair for a charity, which is already in my custody. No more after that!
Blessings!
Joy
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