Everybody does things like that, not that it will make your quilt return to you.
My brother-in-law had researched his family for years, had even gone to the mountains and pawed through poison oak and taken pictures of old grave stones of his ancestors, and after dinner he would sit in his chair and write in a log book everything he'd found to date. He was planning on printing out a family history. Then he would stick everything carefully in a big paper grocery sack beside his chair.
One of his teen sons wanted to go on a date and his mother ordered him to take out the trash before leaving the house....
You can see where this is going....
BIL was so discouraged that he never did try to redo his research, said he'd leave that to his sons if they ever were interested in it, since they refused to go to the dump and look around there for the missing papers and pictures.