Valerean

This unsual drawstring purse came as part of my Vera Bradley bag lot, and a little research allowed me to discover it dates back to 2011, and the watercolor floral pattern is retired. These purses can still be bought used around $20.00 on places like Poshmark and eBay, so it's probably not very rare. I liked the colors and the design, so I'm going to repair it for myself. There aren't a lot of issues with this purse. One part of the drawstring came loose from the cinching strap, so that will have to be tucked back in. I found some edge wear on the bottom right. Also a bit on the bottom left. There are some soiling stains on the magnetic front pocket straps, and a bit of edge wear on both flaps. First I poked the loose drawstring through the cinching strap with my awl. Now the purse can be cinched closed again. For the edge wear and staining I debated on using either a complimentary fabric or some lace cut out appliques. Lace won. I se...

I thrifted this old import quilt last year for the floor in my home office, primarily so my dogs could chew on it instead of my nice quilts. It's turned out to be their favorite quilt for napping on, but is now shedding batting through a few holes that they gnawed in the top. Time for repairs. The patchwork fabric is very thin and worn, so they've been able to tear several holes in it like this one. First I spread out the quilt on the floor and marked all the repairs with safety pins. I don't have any light blue scraps, so I'm using a leaf print to patch over the holes. The old fabric also frayed at the seams in several places. I stitched it back together and reinforced it with some stitching on either side of thesplit seam. It will likely come apart again with use and laundering, so I expect I'll have to patch over them next time. Finished. The quilt really is quite old, with a few lumps from batting migration and overall fading. Th...

Torn handles are a common problem with thrifted bags; they're one of the most stressed parts, and any that are made of fabric often end up shredded as the bag ages. What I needed to do was strengthen and cover the frayed area. I picked out a fabric from my scrap bin that I thought would work well with the Vera Bradley print, and cut two strips from it. Before I started the repair work I ironed the frayed area on both straps flat. That was when I discovered there is some kind of heat fuseable glue in the white interfacing under the frayed fabric, and had to clean glue residue off my iron. Just thought I'd mention it in case someone else tries ironing a Vera Bradley product. It was then a matter of wrapping the new fabric over the damage, pinning it in place, and sewing it on with the machine. Before I did that I ironed my edges on the strips so that they had a 1/4" hem on all sides. If you don't do this then your raw edges will fray. The fix came o...

After laundering my small lot of Vera Bradley purses and a wallet, I hung them to dry. This takes a couple days but helps me avoid warping, wrinkling and other problems that can arises from putting purses in the dryer. I was able to get out most of the brown coffee stain on the blue-green tote, which is old and well-loved but still remains fairly sturdy and quite pretty. It will work nicely as a project bag. Washing it did fray both handles on the tote, so I'll need to patch those. Stop by tomorrow and I'll show you the results.

I repaired the split seams on the survivor quilt, which turned out to be about 11, and wasn't difficult at all. It's a testament to the original maker's skill that it has held together so well all these years. I then shaved the fabrics with pilling to tidy them up. It's pretty common with polyester quilts to have a lot of that, but this one had pretty minimal amounts. Here's a patch before I shaved it. See all the little balls on the orange patch? Here's the after shot, shaved clean. I considered retying the quilt, but it's extremely heavy and hard to manage with the arthritis flare-up I'm currently dealing with in both hands. I'll also have to work on a floor to get it to lay flat, which my knees don't want to do this month. So for now my work on repairing this quilt is done, and I'll save the rest for a time when I'm in better shape to handle it.

This is the wannabut quilt after laundering. Thanks to the polyester still being strong I was able to put it in the washer and give it a good soak in mild detergent and a little vinegar to remove a faint storage smell. After laying it out on the floor of the front room, I'm now pinning split seams in need of restitching. Quilting it would be a challenge for me because it's so big, and I'm trying to avoid giant projects like that would be. After that I will probably sew new ties through the top and backing to hold the quilt together. Because the quilt was never quilted, and only has a few old, disintegrating thread ties here and there it has some bunched places, but I think I can smooth out most of them. I'm renaming this quilt "Survivor" because it has weathered a lot of years and use, and still looks pretty good for its age.

The quilt I got for $7.99 during the last round of Wannabuts arrived; let's see if it's as pretty as the pics. It's a really big quilt -- a couple inches short of a queen size, from the look of it. I think the patchwork is really charming. I'd say this was made back in the seventies or eighties. It's actually quite well made, likely out of polyester clothing scraps (which is also why the colors are still nice and bright. Polyester generally doesn't fade.) There is no batting, and the backing was probably a sheet the maker repurposed. I'm not a fan of polyester fabric, but I repaired a quilt very similar to this one many times over the years for my mother. A friend of hers who was wheelchair bound hand-sewed the entire quilt, making it from scraps of her own old clothes. Mom loved it and always asked me to fix it whenever the hand stitching came loose and the seams split open. At first repairing that old quilt was a hassle, but after...

In between big projects in June I took this vintage crazy quilted patchwork block out of the UFO bin so I could work on something small during my deadline week, and sort of clear my head. Although it's not really valuable the block is probably from the late nineteenth century, and is beautiful. This was a patch up repair job to preserve the piece; I mostly covered some shattered silk patchwork with lace, net or printed organza, and added a few embellishments. It also reminds me that everything we make will someday be gone, and to appreciate not only the process, but the fleeting nature of art. To honor the original maker I left some repair patches unadorned, just covering them enough to keep the shreds intact under the new fabric. Here's the finished block. I might turn this into a pillow to keep in my home office, so that it can serve an upcycled purpose. But it was just delightful doing the patch up.

In order to spruce up and save the double sides crazy quilt I thrifted, I first had to take it apart. The first step was to carefully snip and pull out all the old brown yarn ties. The condition of the yarn ties and seeing the inside of the quilt made me think my age estimate is pretty close. I would save and reuse the batting if it were in better shape, but it's got big holes, major fiber migration lumps and is covered witth tangled threads, so it's not useable. Here are the front and back side of the quilt once I separated them. For now I'm basting some organza ribbon over the separated seams to keep them from tearing even more during reconstruction. Once I have all the seams in need of repair shored up, then I can reassemble the quilt.

Another way to repair and restore an old quilt with fraying patchwork is to replace a patch with a newer one that can cover the weak seams. Here you see I've first tried to restitch both sides of the light yellow patch, but the fabric is very weak and will likely tear away from the stitches. You can try and match the fabric you're covering, but I just try to keep to the same color if possible. I selected a light yellow calico scrap, which I trimmed and folded to cover the problem area. Some quilters will cut out the fraying patch before they do this, but I like to leave it in place to honor the original maker. I used blind stitches to set the new patch in place, and then quilted over it. If you do this carefully no one can ever tell you've covered an existing patch.

My first quilting project for 2024 is this crazy double wedding ring quilt, which I began hand quilting before my vision problems required surgery. I think the reason I never went back to finish this quilt is because of how poorly I was stitching in that time. Anyway, I decided it was high time to finish it. I've restored several double wedding ring quilt tops and quilts, and one common problem with the older ones is fraying and splitting seams. This quilt has a few, as you see here with this light yellow patch. Usually I try to repair the problem by doing any invisible restitch of the seam (which I did here between the pink and blue patches), but often the fraying threatens to happen again, as you see here in the obvious weak spots of the fabric by the arrow. When that happens, rather than create more work for myself I cover the seam with lace or ribbon. Word of warning: this is not how you should repair or restore an heirloom quilt worth a lot of money, or tha...