About 35 years ago my MIL went to the attic and showed me two old hand pieced twin size quilt tops in the Ohio Rose pattern that had been pieced but not quilted. She offered them to me because she knew that I was a quilter. I wanted to put them together and make a king sized quilt for our bed. When we opened them up to look at them I noticed brown stains on them that I thought might be rust. She said that the family story was that it was blood from a wounded Civil War soldier that they had hid in the attic. I didn't think it would ever come out.
I knew that my quilting wouldn't do justice to these beautiful works of art so I took them to a friend who could. She placed them in a bathtub with biz and soaked them for almost a week. When they were removed the blood stains were gone and the fabric looked as if it had been purchased the day before. She spliced the two together and did a beautiful job of quilting. We now have a real family heirloom to pass down to our family with a great story to go along with it. Unfortunately I never did find out which member of the family was responsible for the original hand piecing. Ann in Tn