May to Jessica - Quilt project - 1

 

This style of lettering is in my wanna-try folder. I used a marker and did this a few months ago - but it

has been lost in a stack. If I try again, I need to use nibs and ink. It was inspired by someone who only exchanged a couple times. It's medieval-ish. The madonna stamps looked better than any of the contemporary Forever's in my stash. It probably would have looked better with just pears. 

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I know there are some quilters who read the blog so I'll share one of my side projects. Remember the envelopes to my friend Caroline? She has a pair of quilts that were made by a relative. They were made in the 30s and had two seriously tattered sections in the solid green border. Various bits of flowered fabric were threadbare. Repairing it looked like something I could do - until I looked more closely and I realized that they needed to be cleaned first and I was not comfortable washing them because I had no idea how the fabric would respond. 

Luckily we found an experienced quilt restorer who was willing to wash them and give me tips on the repair work. She was willing to take on the job of restoring the quilts as well - but the estimate on having a museum quality restoration was going to be very high and her process makes the quilts *look* identical to the original, but they are no longer washable - which means they are only for display. Caroline and her daughter, Tracy, and I thought it would be fine to do some *patching* and just cover the worn spots with fabrics that would blend in - and restore them to actually *useful* rather than just display pieces. 

It was fun pondering what the original quilter would have preferred. Maybe she would agree with us to go the useful route. Then we needed to find fabrics that fit in. Luckily Tracy and I have a friend who had a box of scraps from the 1930s and we found almost enough scraps to do all the repairs. 

The pattern is called *Grandmother's Flower Garden* and on these two quilts, the person did what's called *fussy-cutting* where the hexagons in the ring of 12 - has a flower positioned in the middle of each hex. We did not have any scraps that went with this one - and it was only the very center of each flower that was shredded. So I did some long basting stitches (almost like darning) to hold the flower together and then stitched a tiny flower on top - which you can see in the photo below.

If you look at the one below - once again, we did not have any scraps with the right sized daisies so I did another *Jeanerized* patch - where I just covered up the inner portion of the hexagon. The yellow flower doesn't make sense - stacked on the daisy - but our goal was to make the mending blend in from a distance. On the one below - the purple one - again, I only found one useable purple flower which had too much purple - so I only replace the portion of the hex that was inside the hand quilting.