Thread: Repairing a tied quilt

I am putting a new back on a quilt that my brother in laws grandmother made for him. Thanks to the advice from this board, I have decided just to leave the old back on and put a new back over it. My question is... the quilt was originally tied. It appears that 75% of the ties are still in tact.... I don't want to remove them because that was his grandmothers work and I want to leave as much of her as I can on the quilt. I have never tied a quilt and I don't really want to either. Do you think that I can just sew a few stitches right next to where the ties are? Sort of tack with my sewing machine instead of tying That will hold the layers together without removing or taking away from grandma. Will that work? Or do you guys have any ideas?

Thank you for your reply.. may I ask why you feel I should only tack with the machine if there is already a tie still in tact? I don't know anything about tying a quilt

I fixed myson in laws quilt that his grandmother made him as a little boy. It was Los tied. I put the back on then did some stitch in the ditch so the new backing was attached well to the quilt. Not the prettiest quilt but he appreciated having his quilt to wrap up in when missing his family that live quite a distance away!

I repaired a tied quilt made my by MIL for DD (all polyester materials) with machine quilting. DD just wanted to save it to remember her G-Ma, so I stippled it and darned some of the thin spots. You can repair your quilt however you want. There is not right or wrong way, it just depends on how you want it to look.

My machine has a "grommet" stitch that makes a little circle of stitches, meant to reinforce a grommet hole. I've used that to "tie" quilts before and I liked how that looked. Maybe your machine has a decorative stitch you could use?

I have used the button sewing feature on my Pfaff to reinforce or replace ties on a couple of quilts. One was a donation quilt that I was supposed to bind but I could see that the ties were not holding and coming untied so used that stitch over the yarn ties. The other quilt was one that I had been asked add a fleece backing to, covering the original denim backing. Used that button stitch to attach the backing after sewing the fleece backing in a "birthing" manner.

Thank you for your responses... I might check out the button feature, my machine does have that. I was thinking about the "grommet" as well. I have used that in some small borders