Hi, Gardengitl. I'm new to this web site, but I have been involved in repairing old quilts. Normally, the most important thing is to DO NOTHING THAT CANNOT BE UNDONE! If you have patches that have totally disintegrated or are pretty ragged, DO NOT remove and replace them. Just applique a new patch over the old one. That way, 50 years from now, if the quilt turns out to be valuable to someone, they can completely restore it if they want. Likewise, if the binding is all frayed, just apply a new one over the old.
The exception might be if the batting has fallen to pieces. My Mom gave me a quilt that my Grandmother made in the 1940's. The batting was lumped into marble-sized balls in some places, and other areas had no batting at all. Some of the patches, especially the red colors, had disintegrated completely. The quilt was tied, so I carefully removed the ties and the binding stitches, and discarded the balls of batting. I resewed (by hand) the block seams that had come undone, and then placed the top directly on the original backing. I added new batting, and a new backing, and retied the quilt (through the original holes - they were VERY visible!) using a thick dark purple crochet thread that matched the original ties color as closely as possible. When Grandma made the quilt and tied it, she used black crochet thread, but it had faded to dark purple by the time I got the quilt. I put some of the original thread ties under a small patch on the back of the quilt.
Using the original backing under the quilt top meant I didn't really need to cover the disintegrated patches on the top, because the batting couldn't come through. I just hand stitched the holes to the original backing.
The point of my long story is, do not do anything to an interesting old quilt that cannot be undone. I hope this helps. Loreda
Last edited by Loreda; 09/18/11 07:39 AM.
