The very first quilt I made to sell was a roman stripe quilt. For some unknown reason, some of the black fabric had little holes in it. I did prewash the fabric and didn't see it while I was quilting it on the machine. Not knowing what else to do, I "appliqued" a new triangular piece of black fabric over the black fabric that "came apart". I appliqued it by hand, then repeated the quilting in the diagonal lines. Fortunately, that seemed to work, but I was embarassed that the first quilt I actually sold had a problem. If you can't applique over the fabric, perhaps FMQ over it would solve the problem.