Skip to main content

Restoration Quilts

I'm rearranging my quilt closet this week, and deciding what I want to keep and what I can donate. Among the keepers are three I'd like to restore, and there's no time like the present. Here they are:

This one is a hand-pieced and embroidered tumbling blocks quilt with crazy quilt border, all silk. I'm not sure of the age on this one because it has a very new red velvet backing, but I'm going to guess early 20th century. Several patches need replacing.

I love the border:

Late 19th century attic windows quilt, all silk including the ruffle and backing:

The ruffle has shattered and torn in several places and can't be repaired, so that has to go. The blocks are repairable, but the quilt is extremely fragile so I'd have to be really careful. It's a beautiful piece, though:

Cotton Dresden plate quilt, maybe about twenty to thirty years old. This is an old practice piece I started to restore, and then set aside for another project and never got back to. I'm pretty sure it's an import, but it's in very good condition and worth repairing. I planned to replace all the plate patchwork with violets and greens as I did with the one plate I repaired to give it a different look. Might still do that.

I think I'll probably start with the cotton Dresden plate, as I'm a little rusty on restoration work. If I can do one patch every day I think it will help me get back into my quilting mindset without pushing myself to be too creative.

Comments

nightsmusic said…
They're all beautiful! Good choices though the silk will be harder to do of course.

Popular posts from this blog

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Goodwill Gamble #2 Arrives

My second Goodwill gamble arrived; this is one I paid ten bucks for last month. Just inside the lid was a big roll of plastic mesh that I think is for latchhook work. In the auction listing it looked like fabric to me, so that was unexpected. Someone at the seller's end was nice enough to put a note on this pinned fabric. I'll put on my gloves before I take it out to inspect it. The embroidered green fabric turned out to be 1-1/2 yards of sequinned and three-dimensional designer fabric. I'll guess this cost somewhere between $20.00 to $30.00 a yard, and it's in pristine condition. But here's a shot of everything in the lot, which is mostly crafty odds and ends with a small amount of cotton fabrics, a large amount of synethetic fabrics, and some other surprises. The original owner of these was probably a Catholic school teacher; these beads, crosses and medallions are the kind of rosary kits for kids to make at Sunday school or Bible camp (and s...

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...