SueSew

A young woman in my office came to me with a handmade quilt wedding-gifted to her by a friend. Modern design, big squares, nice choice of pattern, placement, color and print. roughly 5'x6'. The DH washed it and it ended up with ball of batting, some fraying, and an empty sack. She hoped there was something I could do. Of course I sailed into it thinking, no problem...but then

1. It turned out the quilter had forgotten to quilt the sandwich, but just machine-tacked 1/2" long tacks with a .5 stitch size - in only three places - which is why the ball of batting. And the fabric was not as strong as the tacks so one had ripped right out.

2. When I considered how to take it apart, discovered that she used the pillowcase method, no binding.

3. When I painstakingly took out the seams and opened the quilt innards, I learned that she was unfamiliar with the quarter inch seam concept, and that some of her fabric was not the best #threads to inch and it had frayed a lot inside and pieces needed to be reinforced somehow.

4. Because the 1/4" seam not adhered to, nothing was really flat or squared, and the quilt itself was not a rectangle, and a lot of the outside pieces were that fraying fabric.

5. I noticed that some of the 15" square pieces had 10" square pieces machine appliqued onto them, adding another dimension of slight wonkiness, and that in constructing the quilt there were a good number of Y seams not so well executed.

OMG! I was over my head for sure! But I had said I'd do it, and I wanted to respect the quilters efforts and design but make a repair that they could wash again and again. So

1. I carefully ironed it, laid it out and measured over and over from different points to determine the best way to square it up and cut off the frayed edges.

2. I went to my fave LQS and bought the best-quality fabric in a close match, and bordered the quilt on front AND back.

3. Layout of the sandwich was difficult for sure, but I got three sides good and one just didn't show the border on the back. I used 505 spray.

4. I didn't want to get flashy at all (not that I could LOL) so I SID to give structural stability, then went over the weak seams and used a little decorative squiggle stitch. I have never quilted one of the modern big-pieces quilts and it is truly the wide open spaces, so I meandered. I tried highlighting the appliqued blocks with square outlines, but the fabric was nowhere near flat enough.

5. At this point I was in a hurry so decided to use Clarissa's clever flange machine binding, which I have used before and looked great. Hahaha. This time - maybe the thickness of the flannel backing - it didn't really come together properly and I had to unsew it a couple times, which took longer than hand-sewing the binding in the end.

I 'signed' it with my initials and a heart done in machine embroidery. I am glad to be finished and proud I got through this high-stress project, and I will never volunteer to to a repair again!!!

I would love to hear others stories who have done repairs to damaged quilts. Thanks for listening to mine!