HOW TO GIVE AN OLD QUILT NEW LIFE

Have you ever come across old quilt tops on or maybe a quilt that just wasn’t finished properly at the thrift store. Did you buy it or were you intimidated by the work involved in getting it. This is the story of a quilt that needed a little love and attention to be the best it could be. Found at a flea market languishing amongst a heap of fabrics the colours just caught my eye. It was barely a quilt at all but a pieced top backed with a tablecloth. No quilting, no batting. But the top was beautiful with tiny hand stitched (1-1.5″) triangles. All of the fabrics are pre 60’s every piece a little gem. I was in love.Unfortunately it had been backed and bound much later and very unsympathetically. The choice of backing fabric from the design and because it wasn’t rewashed it had shrunk making the top bulge.

So here is how I fixed it with a little lesson in hand quilting thrown in:

– Firstly I unpicked and removed the backing then pressed the top. I chose a vintage flannel to back it and a poly batting as the fill. I considered a cotton batting but really wanted more loft than a cotton batting could give.

– Sandwiched the batting with the top and backing and made sure it was all smooth and flat with no creases. The backing and batting were a little larger than the top. Decided that hand quilting would be most sympathetic to the top design mainly because it was mostly hand pieced and also because the design was a bit free form. I had some vintage thread (blue) laying about which did the nicely. A little thicker than sewing thread but thinner than embroidery thread. I suspect it was a top stitching thread. Hand quilting thread is also available in stores.– To hold all the layers during the quilting process I hand basted (long running stitches) with normal sewing thread (yellow). Worked from the centre out the basting stitches stop the layers from shifting whilst working the quilting stitches. Some people like to use safety pins at regular intervals for this stage.– Due to the angular design of the patchwork. I felt a chevron pattern for the quilting would be flattering. All the quilting was worked in short running stitches loosely guided by the design on the top. Because this was my first experience with hand quilting it was far from perfect but overall very effective. Below I’ll show you how to hide your beginning knot in the quilt.

1. Tie a small knot in the thread and put your needle through just the top fabric coming out where you want the stitch to start.

2. Here you can see the stitch.

3. Now gently tug the knot through so it now sits on the back of the fabric.

– Once the quilting was finished I trimmed the excess batting and backing using the top as a guide.– The top was not at all square but I chose to keep the edges wonky because it was part of the character of the quilt. I didn’t want to away any of the beautiful fabric because I felt like it wasn’t my place to do so. Admittedly I probably should have hand bound the edges but I really don’t have anything against machine binding (which can be easily un-picked later if required).And here it is in all it’s glory.