Hello Everyone,
I would appreciate it if you could help me. My DD brought a quilt she purchased some time ago for me to look at. It is hand quilted with appliquéd hankies on it. Each hankie has a hand embroidered signature on it. It is just precious. I had hoped we would find a year but no luck. It does appear to be quite old. It needs to be laundered and I don’t know how we should do that. It is very well constructed. The hankies are very well anchored and none appear to be loose.
Can you please advise me? The quilt is mostly muslin and has a prairie point border. It is approx. 82X89. She wants to sell it but she nor I know how to determine the value. Any suggestions??
Thanks for your help. Shirley

Hold on! Everyone's going to ask for pictures.

Pictures would be wonderful!

It can be washed in a top-loading washing machine as long as you never allow agitation. I would probably use Orvus for soap. Fill the machine with cold water, add the soap and mix it in, stop the machine, add the quilt, hand agitate by pushing up and down, move knob to "spin" and allow soapy water to spin out, allow it to fill with rinse water, stop the machine, hand agitate by pushing up and down in the rinse water, advance to "spin" again. Probably do two rinses.

Take out immediately and either lay flat to dry or dry in a large dryer. If laying flat, you can do it outdoors as long as it is in the shade, you place a large sheet underneath, and you cover the quilt with another large sheet (to protect against passing birds, etc.) and anchor the sheet edges with rocks.

Maybe the first question I should have asked is does it really need to be washed? Is it stained? If stained, I would probably use Retro Clean (http://www.retroclean.com ). If there is any possibility of color bleeding, I would use Synthrapol (but that requires hot water).

I just heard a lecture by a quilt historian. This is how she said you should wash a quilt. Line the bottom of your bathtub with a towel or two. Lay the quilt on top of it and put some water into the tub with a very mild soap or quilt washing product ( you can find products made for washing quilts on-line and in quilt shops ). Gently fold the quilt over and over making the water go through it. then drain and rinse. Use dry towels to absorb as much of the water as you can and lay the quilt flat to finish drying. Hope this will help you.

i found this summer that putting a wet quilt across our hammock in the back yard worked great for drying :)===faster than just on the ground. (still with sheet under & over)

as for determining value- you might want to find an appraiser- it is about $40 to have a quilt appraised- then you will have documentation showing the value- and you might be surprised! quilt appraisers are trained, and certified by the American Quilter's Association and will give you a certified written appraisal.

Contact a qualified quilt appraiser to start with, to get an idea of the quilt's value:

http://www.quiltappraisers.org/

Before doing *anything* to clean it, contact a textile curator (you can contact the nearest museum with professional staff to ask for referrals).

Thank you so much for the advice everyone. I will post a picture if I can figure out how to do it.
The quilt doesn't look like it has any stains, its just smells musty and looks dirty.