gardengirl1331

Last week my aunt called me out of the blue (after not talking to them in 13 years, we've never been close) she said she was visiting my uncle (my mom has two brothers so he's her BIL) and saw the quilts I made for him and his wife and LOVED LOVED them, and asked if I'd repair a quilt for her that my grandmother (her MIL) made MANY years ago (probably in the 50's maybe? She has no clue when it was made and doesn't even have her name on it which is odd so we think it might have been one of her first quilts, which might mean way older than the 50's) I got it in the mail yesterday (sent in just a thin bad padded envelope that was torn open (and it was pouring rain, thankfully I met the mail driver and got it right from her with no damage or even rain drops on it!! sigh. I'll be sending it back in a plastic bag in a box)) I have her permission to do whatever I want to it. I was originally thinking of patching with some solids (there are solids in the fabrics) but once I looked the whole back is in ok shape, so I might patch with bits of the back fabric, then patch with the solids on the back where they won't be as noticeable since everyone always looks at the front more. The binding is frayed on the whole thing so I might have to do all new binding. Not sure if there is enough of the back to do binding too, probably not it's fairly small and I don't want to pick the whole sandwich apart to use the whole panel I won't chance further damage to the front! It's in pretty bad shape, like bad bad.

But looking at this fragile old thing (and thinking of my grandmother who passed away in 08, and was the one who taught me to sew/quilt when I was little) and thinking of cutting into it and trying to do something I've NEVER done before makes me want to puke.

I just need to reassurance that I can do this, and even if it's not great, the end result will still be loved. But man, my heart....