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Restoring a 1930's Quilt

What do you do with an old quilt top?
My step Dad's wife had a quilt top her mother made that she wanted me to create two quilts with for her daughters. The sashing was coming apart and the top needed a good cleaning.  It looked like it had some type of glue on some parts of it.

At first I thought I could repair the sashing and divide the top into two as she suggested.  But the sashing was partly machine sewn and hand sewn.  Very strange.
So I decide to take it apart instead. After it was apart I soaked the whole thing in Retro Clean for a day.  Man the water was brown when I went to pull it out! I nice cold rinse and I quick toss in the dry on a cool setting.

I then Ironed and starched every piece.  After that I trimmed everything even.  The sashing was different sizes.  No wonder it looked weird.  I don't have any pictures of the before quilt top.

I had a couple of sashing pieces that were damaged by the glue that I didn't want to put back in the quilt.  Because I divided the quilt top into two I also need some sashing and cornerstones to complete one of the quilts.  I tried reproducing the color and had it printed on Spoonflower but it didn't match.  I also recreated a couple of the fabrics in the quilts to have printed for the binding.  Below is a picture of one of the quilts with out the sashing on the bottom.  This picture is after the quilt top was re-pieced.
My reasoning for resewing the quilt to is two-fold.  First I wasn't able to repair it with the wonky sashing and quilt it on the longarm without issues.  Second, I felt that this woman put so much work into the beautiful appliqué and embroidery that it would be ashamed to do a half-ass job on it.  I know if it was my quilt top I would want the person to make it as beautiful as they can.  I also wanted the ladies that were going to own these quilts to love them and want to display them.

At first I didn't have the right color of fabric to add a border around the quilt.  My local quilt shops were out of the Kona snow that would of been the right color.  So I tea died the border fabric to get it to match. It defiantly looked better but in the sun it is still whiter than the original fabric.  You can see the border fabric in the picture below. Oh by the way, I did end up finding a green and pink to finish the sashing with!
It took me about 4 months to finish these quilts.  I had a lot going on and I custom quilted both of them. The quilts were about 60"x75".
The quilting was a combination of freemotion quilting and computerized quilting.  The sashing and borders where done with the computer.  I also stitched in the ditch around all the appliqué and sashing. I ended up stitching on the appliqué to stabilize it too.
These quilts really made me love the 1930's fabrics.  I found myself designing quilts with the reproduction fabrics available today.  Stay tuned for my newest Accuquilt pattern!

I don't seem to have a picture of the first completed quilt.  The first picture in this blog is the other quilt top.
Don't be afraid to finish that old quilt top and bring it back to life. Diana was trilled with the finished quilts! I wanted to also add the beautiful lady that made this quilt top.

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