Good as New

 One of the interesting projects that I take on from time to time is repairing quilts, sometimes they are old quilts that need some love to give them a few extra years and sometimes they are new quilts that have had something happen to.  This month I had two newer quilts that needed repair work!

Quilt number one was this gorgeous Kaffe Fasset quilt that had been quilted with a large tuck in the border.  The quilt owner took out the quilting in the area, sewed a seam to take in the tuck and brought it to me to hand sew the area in the seam that was still open and re-quilt it.  If you look closely at this picture you can see the pins and hand basting.

This was a pretty straightforward process, it was nice that the quilting was a fan motif, so was fairly forgiving if I got off the lines a little! I think she'll be happy with the repairs.

The second quilt was a bit more involved.  A puppy had chewed off the corner of this quilt - the nice thing is that this is a quilt I made and I still had fabric left for the repair!  This is my Lover's Kiss quilt that I donated to the Fire department for an auction.  I had sewn a label on the back with my information, so she was able to contact me to do the repair (another good reason to add a label to all your quilts!)  I had already repaired a different corner that was barely chewed off, but this one was a bit more extensive.  I started by trimming off the corner on a diagonal.  I measured the amount needed and cut a 4 1/2 square for the repair, then cut that in half diagonally to make the triangle needed.

Then I sewed the triangle to the back of the quilt, sewing through all the layers.  I detached about an inch or so of the binding to get it out of the way, but will need to go further back in order to sew the new section of binding on.

I did the same with the top fabric, taking care to match the seam so the repair is not too obvious.  I then used a triangle of fusible batting and pressed it between the two layers.  I really love the fusible batting for these kind of repairs as it keeps the batting perfectly in place, making the rest of the repair so much easier.

After binding I added a touch of quilting - as you can see the finished repair is hardly noticeable!  Look closely and you can see the tiny corner I replaced right behind it. I'm  definitely hanging on to the rest of the scraps from this quilt as this is the second repair I've made in the six months she's had it!  Hopefully her puppy will be out of the chewing stage soon and I won't need to fix it again, but I'll be prepared if I do!

I have finished two more blocks in my Alice's Wonderland Sampler, and hope to finish the template section this week!  On to English Paper Piecing - lots of handwork in my future, it looks like!