Monday, April 11, 2011

Vintage Feedsack Quilt Redo

Last summer I rescued some quilts from the floor of my grandmother's old house before it was demolished. They had been exposed to the weather and who knows what else for over a decade and where/are in really bad shape. The fabric is fragile and stained in some places and ripped in some more. The backing is coarse feedsacks and some of it is even more fragile than the front - I can even see a faint outline of a chicken on one! But, considering all they had been through, I tried to be grateful for what I could salvage.

I spent a few months coming up with ideas, but nothing seemed to really fit what I had to work with until . . . one day in the craft store I discovered album frames (for records or scrapbook pages.) They will accept thicker objects than normal frames and are super easy to use.


These are 4 of the finished squares! It's so nice to know that at least 4 squares are safe from falling apart.


This is one of the rips from where it was folded. Even though everything I read told me not to wash the quilts until I could repair them it just was not possible. They were so far from sanitary that I couldn't even touch them without gloves. Luckily I have a front load washer so I was able to soak and wash them one at a time.


I laid out each frame over a salvageable square and traced around the edge. They aren't perfectly square but I didn't want to pull the fabric too much.


It took me about an hour before I was ready to make the first cut. I even called my mom and said okay I'm getting ready to cut, just want to make sure it's still okay! (It would have been much easier if it had been made by someone I didn't know or wasn't related to!)

These are so pretty, but either are damaged or on the edge so I will have to come up with some other way to use them.


I love all of the different fabrics and it's so cool to know that my grandmother and great-grandmother pieced them all together. I gave away the squares to my mother and cousins and will save some for my daughters, too.
I'm not quite sure yet what to do with the other quilts (this is the best one), but at least they are in a safe place now.






1 comment:

Unknown said...

The quilt is beautiful. I have a couple from my granny and one is in very delicate shape. Right now it sits on the bottom of our quilt stack, looking pretty, but unusable. I'm still trying to decide what to do.