A CUSTOM QUILT REBORN!

A lady at work brought in this quilt from her great grandmother, I believe. I wish I had a before picture of how yellow and threadbare the quilt was before Karen and I redid it. Here's how the story went...

Friend: Rachel, I have a couple of quilts that my great-grandmother made, and they are in bad shape. Do you think you might be able to fix them?

Me: (thinking to myself, sure I could fix them! I know nothing about repairing a quilt, but I am sure that there is a book at the library about quilt repair. I used to own a quilt shop, of course I can do anything! I am super quilter, and can't let my reputation as a quilter get tarnished by saying no. You always say yes, and you haven't even seen the quilt! Let's see it first. Worse case scenario you can rope Karen into helping you, she can do anything, she is the awesome sewer!) My response to friend at work, "cool, bring them in and I will take a look at them."

Friend: Great! I brought them in with me, here they are. I was thinking that if you can't fix it, I was going to cut off the top row and make it into pillows or something.

Me: Gasp! No don't cut off anything. I can't guarentee anything, but I'll see what I can do.

So I take the quilts over to Karen's house for her to look at them with me, and we study them, and think about what we can do.

Me: It can't be that hard Karen! What do you think, can you work some magic? All we have to do, and when I say we, I really mean all you have to do, is take out this part, and this part, and this part of the sashing and hand piece in the new peices.

Karen: Oh you think it will be that easy do you?

Me: For you! You are the awesome sewer, remember?

Karen: I don't know, I'll have to think about it.

Me: ok, fair enough, I'll leave the quilts with you to mull over.

Now keep in mind that there are 2 quilts. Some parts, don't have any part of the quilt left. They are yellow with age, and this Sunbonnet Sue quilt has been repaired in the past, with the whole top border being taken off, machine stitched back on, and quilted with straight line quilting, while the rest of the quilt was hand quilted. So I of course sucking at any type of hand sewing begin my search on the internet about quilt repair.. I find this book at the library and begin studying it like the holy bible of quilts. Now I have to admit that some of the info is like greek to me, and on my drive to work I am pondering what to do with this quilt to not let my friend down.

And then it hits me! A part of the book that I had skimmed over talked about removing the blocks and redoing the top! Yes, this is my eureka moment. Now I just have to convince Karen that this can be done, so I get to work bright and early and promptly text her about the plan. I let her know that I will be over that night after work to show her the part of the book that talks about removing the blocks, so that she knows I am not making this up, and that in no time we will be professional quilt restorers, can quit our jobs and work full time on quilts. Karen knows that I have a tendency to think big, so she texts me back with, "Let's just try and do this one first before we quit our day jobs!"

Ok fair enough! Next comes how to clean the quilt. So again I go back to the internet and search for a gentle cleaning product for these antique fabrics. I find it, and I have to admit that it really is a miracle cleaner! If you have not tried Retro Clean, you have got to order it! The link is here. Ok back to the story. The blocks clean up, like they are brand new, and not 100 years old looking. Karen and I are both in awe at how awesome they look. We head to the local quilt shop for some new fabric in colors similiar to the original, and Karen pieces it together in the same layout as the original.

Now I am charged with the task of quilting it. I want to impress my friend at work with my quilting, remember she knows nothing about quilting and wanted to chop off the top of the quilt with a pair of paper scissors! So when pressed with how to finish a special quilt, I tend to procrastinate. By the way, I am very good at procrastinating, I mean really good! So the quilt sits at my house for like the last 2 months just waiting for me to be struck by inspiration. Can you hear the grass growing right now, nothing is coming to me on this quilt! I have ideas, but nothing inspirational! I have quilters block. Has this ever happened to you?

So I decided that this would be the weekend to get it finished. Once I put a quilt on the frame, I really don't like to take it off until it is finished. So I knew that once it was on the frame that I had to get it done. I played around with my IQ for a few hours, but just couldn't come up with anything that was really great, so I decided that I needed to free motion quilt it. Now I can do a pretty good stipple or loops free hand, but I wanted something a little more for the background of the Sunnbonnet Sue's. So there you have it, without further ado...Enjoy! Rachel