A couple of months ago I made a trade with my sister-in-law. She had a barrel composter I wanted, and she also had a quilt that needed repair. So we swapped–I fix the quilt, and she gives me the composter. Deal!
This is a quilt my mother made for my nephew. Each square has a portion of the song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” embroidered on it. (She had a Husqvarna Viking embroidery machine.) So cute! And my nephew has loved it. I mean REALLY loved it. The quilt needed some help.
Mom always used quilt-shop quality fabrics because they last so much longer than the cheap stuff. But when you have a heavily embroidered section and a lot of use, the fabric around the edges of the embroidery gets very stressed. In a lot of places the fabric had torn. Here’s a picture of the barn. Look around the silo and the base of the barn,
The binding was also in awful condition.
Fixing textiles is not my strong point, but I figured the best thing here would be to stitch a wide zig-zag over the torn area with an off-white thread. I hoped it would do the job and not stand out too much, I was pretty happy with the result. Here’s what the barn looks like now. Not too bad, unless you look at the back of the quilt. There are squiggly lengths of off-white stitching all over, and they stand out really well against the green backing. I warned my sister-in-law that the back wouldn’t look so great. I hope she remembers.
I found a fabric in my stash that coordinated with the quilt and used it to replace the quilt binding. The photo of the quilt at the beginning of this post shows the finished and fixed quilt.
Hopefully, it’ll last a good long time after this. I will probably tell my sister-in-law that hanging it up on display would probably be the best option from now on, although I doubt that will happen. This quilt has even more meaning for him now since Mom passed away last year, and he loves to wrap up in it. And that’s ok. Mom made her quilts to be used and loved.
So one item on my list of things that need done ASAP is done today! Actually two–I finished planting the garden today, too.
On to my step-daughter’s quilt. I was supposed to have that done by Mother’s Day. Didn’t make that deadline, did I? After that I really need to finish that triangle doily...
Nancy
