Ok, I took the advice on here and looked it over a bit closer and took an iron to it. I hadn’t realized the whole thing is hand stitched. The fabric seems to be in decent shape, not rotting although it’s clear that it had some mildew or something on it at one point and someone washed it. I’ve got two things running around in my head:

First, My grandmother was a seamstress and this is the only thing I have from her that she has sewn. We moved away from her when I was very little so we were not close. There was another quilt, I’m assuming in much better shape that my aunts and cousins finished with her while she was on her deathbed and gave to another granddaughter. I have some feelings about that... given that I’m the one in the family who loves quilts and have never been given one but I think I need to get past that and basically take what I can get, which is this one.

Secondly, I don’t really like the design all that much. I seems to be growing on me a little bit the more I go back and look at it again and again trying to appreciate it, but there is something about the shape of her butterflies that bugs me. LOL! Silly thing... I know!

Her hand stitching is really nice. I can only imagine how much time she spent on this, it’s a pretty good sized top. It feels like it would be doing it an injustice to take a machine to it at this point. I don’t know... what do you think?

You said your mother asked you "Can you do anything with this top?"

This is not meant to be disrespectful - but there is no law against folding it up and putting it back in a box (with acid free paper, if you want to preserve it) for now. It might look more appealing in a year or two.

If this had not been your Grandmother's, what would you do with it?

Does your Mother have feelings about it? Would she like to work on it?

This is the way I would handle this top as well. Actually...you don't want to "fix" this quilt...but to preserve it.

great questions!

My feeling is no one in the family wanted it, they didn’t know what to do with it, so they decided to give it to me since I’m the one who has expressed an interest in quilting.

I would still value value it even if it hadn’t been my grandmothers just because I value sewing, especially hand work but I wouldn’t feel as obligated to fix it.

I really think everyone in my family viewed it as a problem to be solved. Giving it to me solved their problem. Lol, I suspect I will never hear it mentioned again unless I bring it up.

at this point my motivation rests entirely in my desire to connect with my heritage and my grandmother around our common interest in quilting. Maybe I will put it up for a while and see if improving my quilting skills changes how difficult it feels to tackle. Right now it just feels overwhelming.