Before and during

This is my latest restoration project, a not-so-old but loved-to-near-death churn dash.  In fact, when the client brought it to me, I first told her I didn't think there was anything I could do for her quilt.  The sashing was shredded, basically. There was almost no quilting left.  The batting was in balled-up wads.  In most households, this would have been a dog bed years ago.  I'm almost ashamed to say that that's exactly what it would have been in my house.  It had a number of small stains that looked like ketchup but could have been who-knows-what!  I'm going to go with ketchup.

The blocks are an assortment of 70's-ish dress prints.  There's a variety of fiber content, which meant a variety of shrinkage amounts as the quilt was washed, which I guess contributed to the shredded sashing as the blocks pulled away from each other.

I agreed to take the blocks apart to see if there was something I could do with them - a smaller quilt of all the best ones, or something.  I ended up  being able to save all of the blocks except one.  The white background was the same fabric as the backing, so where I needed to replace background pieces I had "reserve stock."  I mended the blocks that needed mending and then I reset them all - a trick because they were all different sizes now, on account of the difference in shrinkage (and because while they were made with much love, they were rather casually measured and sewed together.)  It was a real challenge to my squaring-up abilities.  I still don't know how flat it lie once the quilting is finished, but I don't think that's the client's foremost concern.

So here's the top all put back together (except for the borders).  I'm quilting now.  I could make out faint signs of Baptist Fan hand quilting in the original. I hope it will look like the original quilting, but there was so little of it left, I can't really be sure.  I hope the client likes it!  I should be finished in a month or so. 

Well, hello again

Ok - it's now customary for me to go months without posting. I'm not even going to say I'm going to try and do better. We'll just see how it goes.

I have been busy since spring. I finished the restoration of a church member's grandmother's flower garden. All the flowers looked like this:


And now the whole quilt looks like this:


I was nervous to return it to her, but she loved it. I had previously replaced the binding on another antique quilt she has, a North Carolina Lily, and she was thrilled with that job, but this one's so much bigger. And this is her favorite quilt because her grandmother made it and she remembers sleeping under it as a child.

I did have to go a bit lighter on the gold fabric - but it's still in character, I think.

This project has really made me want to do quilt restoration as a side career. I would love that. I'd love to go to the workshops Nancy Kirk holds. Or at least purchase her dvds. But I think the next step is to find another quilt that needs restoration and restore half of it so I can have something to show people. Sounds like a good reason to go antique hunting!