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!

Time off is a wonderful thing!

We had a wonderful well-deserved week of vacation!  We traveled to visit our grandchildren (and their parents) and just enjoy some time away from all the work we've been doing.  We have made it a routine to go up for a week in the fall, and the weather was actually quite good despite the forecast for rain.

We enjoyed watching football, soccer, swimming and gymnastics!  We walked the Nike campus with our son-in-law who works there.  Gorgeous place - and got in 2.2 miles while on our tour.

 Kids and water!

 Sweet statue - me and my beloved years from now!

There is a large berm build up around the campus from when they created this beautiful lake area - instead of paying to haul it away, it was put to good use!

My little climber - she's always busy!  I was in charge of her while her brother had soccer practice.  

We also enjoyed our time in Washington - I got to make a Halloween costume for my granddaughter there.  Luckily I had my sewing kit with me, I just hand-stitched felt to a t-shirt and embroidered a spiral onto a felt cone for the horn:

We also got to meet the new pup, Port:

Isn't she a cutie?  She's almost 4 months old and is a goldendoodle.  Her favorite game?  Grab something you don't want her to have and run!  She's teething and loves to chew on ice cubes.  She was lots of fun to play with!

It was so nice to relax - I brought a project from home to work on while sitting around.  This is my husband's sofa blanket.  It's probably about 20 years old and very well used!  The binding was a mess, actually the whole thing was pretty much a mess.  I offered to make a new one, but he really was hoping to get some more years with this one!  So I am patching the holes, adding some quilting and replacing the binding.  Fingers crossed it will hold together in the laundry afterwards!

Last time I repaired the quilt I added some ties through the center of the paisley blocks.  Every single tie ripped through the upper fabric.  So lots of little holes in those to be repaired.

This end was pretty shredded! I had to trim about half the outer border off before replacing the binding.  Much better looking now!  

 I also added some big stitch quilting with the Aurifil 12 wt I used for my October challenge (2610).  I stitched along every other row of squares.  The back looks like a big mess, but at least it won't rip the top like the ties did.  It's a dark blue, just looks washed out in this photo.

Speaking of washed, that's where it is now, then my happy hubby will have his beloved blankie back.  I'm going to start on a new one anyway, though, because I don't think this one will last much longer!

I had a wonderful week of hand stitching, now it's back to the sewing studio for lots of speedy machine work.  My list is long for November, and I've got to get busy crossing items off my list.

Linking up with Slow Sunday Stitching on Kathy's blog!

Joan's Vintage Butterfly Quilt - Finished!

I am so glad to be able to report that I've finally finished this quilt!  It's been an interesting project from start to finish and I am excited to be able to hand it off to its owner now as a very usable quilt in good condition.  When I first saw this quilt it really was in a sorry state - a still damp ball of wadded up cloth with huge lumps and shreds of batting inside.  At least it smelled good!

After examining it, I called the owner and told her that I could repair the pieces that were torn, but in order to replace the batting I was going to have to take all the ties out of the back and basically re-do it.  She said, "certainly, do what you need to" so I took it home to begin the journey of bringing this lovely quilt back to life.  A fellow butterfly fan was in the shop while I was looking at it and we got really excited because neither one of us has seen this block before.  We both liked the curve of the wing, because it gave a graceful look to a potentially very geometric block.

Over the next couple of months I would take the quilt out while watching television and take out some of the ties.  They were hard to remove, tied through the back of the quilt right into the seam allowances of the butterflies - no yarn showing at all on the top surface!  How on earth the maker of the quilt accomplished this, I can't imagine!  Then I started unpicking the edges - the backing (a blue percale sheet) was just wrapped over to the front and stitched down.  A nicely done, very serviceable finish.  As I got the back loose I started pulling out handfuls of shredded batting.  Several wastebaskets full by the time I was done!  None of it in any kind of usable condition, wouldn't even have made good pillow stuffing.  It took a while to get all the little shreds out of the seams, but I just worked on it a little at a time.  When I got it all cleaned up I was able to check out the repairs needed.  Quite a few of the black pieces needed replacing, and there were holes in some of the white background pieces.  Not too many popped seams, though.

I drafted a block pattern to make it a little easier to cut out the pieces I needed to replace.  That was kind of fun, and I pieced a block of my own, just to see how hard it was to put together.  A little tricky, but not too bad, really.  Not that I'm about to make 90 of them!  That's how many this quilt has in it - it's a 9 inch block, so the finished quilt is about 81 x 90 inches.  A little small for my queen size bed, but quite pretty.  I used a solid blue sheet for the backing.  After finishing the repairs I quilted it by machine - I quilted loop the loops in the background, then stitched each block in the ditch, matching my thread color to the solid color in the butterfly wings.  I had wanted to quilt some swirly lines in the butterfly wings, but since the quilt wasn't really flat, I decided that the stitch in the ditch was the best way to deal with those puffy wings.  It worked out fabulously!  I thought a black binding would really add to it, but in the end and added a blue binding as the customer requested.

  I take a pretty liberal stance in my decision on how to approach repairing/refurbishing/renovating an old quilt.  I take into account the age of the quilt with the sentimental and/or historical value as well as monetary value and let my potential customers know my advice, and how the options will affect the value, lifespan and kind of care the quilt will require.  If this quilt would have been quilted originally (well, then we wouldn't have had the batting problem either, most likely!) I would have advised just to make the basic repairs and leave the old backing on it.  Because we ended up taking it down to the top I could have hand quilted or machine quilted it.  The owner confirmed that it was from the early 60's, not a family heirloom, but a quilt she had purchased and she wanted a quilt that she would be able to use and not spend a lot of money on the quilting.  So we decided that machine quilting was the best way of finishing the quilt.  In other circumstances I have advised no repairs, or limited repairs.

So glad this is finished, and I can't wait for my customer to see it!  I hope she loves the quilt and that she will enjoy many years of the use of this lovely quilt!  If you'd like to make this lovely block, I've uploaded the pattern to my pattern shop - let me know if you make it and how it comes out!

Pulling ties...

This morning I am working on finishing th task of pulling all the ties out of a butterfly quilt so I can repair it, replace the batting and quilt it! There were a lot of ties in this one. I can't quite figure out how they were done as they all go through the back into the seam allowances of the pieced top. Too bad the cotton batting disintegrated!