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.

March 27, 2020 at 7:04 AM

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

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.

Valerean

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