Sue asked me if I could repair these quilts for her. So now, I'm doing my best to get these quilts back to there nice looking self's. The first quilt I am working on is belonged to my youngest son best Friend (Tyler) who is Brazil doing Missionary work.
The quilt you can tell was well love and used by a little boy, due to the worn edges and holes in the quilt. The quilt was patched several times. The fabric has become very thin also. I told Sue that the quilt would have to be trimmed down, she didn't mind.
The first thing, I did was to remove all the binding, my goal was reuse the binding. The removing of the binding took ruffly 3 1/2 hours, do to all the stitches in the binding. After the binding was removed I then ironed them out and they were ready to go. there were in good shape.
After that, I then started to remove all the yarn ties that were all over the quilt. Then I need to take all the stitches that were holding the front and back of the quilt together out. There were a lot of zig-zag stitches that were holding it together. Since I knew I had to trim all the edges down, I cut the stitches out with scissors all the way around, so all I had to do then is to remove all the basting stitches that were hidden.
Once that was done I was able to gently remove the the quilt top. Underneath was a old piece of batting that was very worn and need to be replaced. After discarding of the batting, I was able to see the backing which was in great shape, the only holes were where the quilt was tied which were very small. The back was a old sheet I think, which worked great for tying quilts.
First off was to repair the quilt top best I could. I laid the quilt top out and then cut away the major holes and worn areas around the edges. The major hole was 5 1/2" in height so I knew one edge would be the biggest area to cut off. After all the trimming, there were still a few holes and worn spots. So I then, repaired them with using a zig-zag stitch to bring the seam together, then I followed that with some fray check to hold the raw edges together. I also put some zig-zag stitches around the patches to reinforce them. The top looked much better and was ready for reassembly.
I laid the backing down and found a piece of batting that would work on top of the backing and then to quilt top into a quilt sandwich. And with a curved needle and some heavy duty DMC Floss that matched the quilt. I tied the quilt back together. I have almost tied, so this weekend I need to pick up more to finish it.
Since I was almost done with the tying, I decide to go ahead and sew the sandwich together around the edge, to prepare for the binding. So, all I have to do now is put on the binding back on and it is finished. In the next day or so! Then I can get the other quilt repaired.
I hope both Sue and Tyler will enjoy for more years to come with these repairs.
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