Originally Posted by lhardwick
A few years ago my MIL was going through some stuff stored in the bottom of a cedar chest and found a menagerie of hand-sewn quilt blocks that her mother made. They look like maybe they were her trial blocks or just left over ones. She was going to throw them out, but I asked for them. Now they are sitting in a tote in my sewing area and I can't decide what to do with them. Do ya'll have any suggestions? I've never hand quilted anything and know I do not have the appropriate time to do it properly.
I also have a complete queen size hand-sewn Maple Leaf quilttop my grandmother made for me, but was never able to finish.
I'm afraid to machine quilt them because I don't want to ruin them, but I'm just puzzled what to do. Can ya'll help me?
I inherited a quilt top that my grandmother made in the late 1930's or early 1940's. I can't hand quilt - I don't have the talent and my hands hurt when I do anything that requires fine dexterity and lots of repetition. I found a local long arm quilter who rented me her machine, and I machine quilted it. That was three years ago, and it's holding up fine. (We do use it, but only when we have family visiting. The rest of the time I store it on a bed, with a store bought quilt over it to protect it from the sun.) So unless the quilt top is in bad shape, you can probably have it machine quilted.
The long arm quilter did caution me about quilting density - she said less is better on older fabric. She also told me to use a thin batting with the older fabric, so that's what I did.
By the way, I had no idea what I was doing when I used the long arm quilting machine. Ignorance is bliss... but I guarantee that it looks better badly quilted (by me) than it ever did sitting in a drawer.
How about framing some of the blocks and displaying them in the house? Or make some doll quilts. If you have little girls in your life, they will love them.