Repairing and Patching an Old String Quilt

My daughter-in-law asked if I could patch up her Great Grandmother's quilt.  The quilt is in pretty bad shape with lots of holes (some big ones!) and stitches coming out all over the place.   Her request was that I just fix it so the damage wouldn't get any worse.

From a distance its a great scrap quilt:

This quilt is the perfect example of a REAL scrap quilt.  It contains every kind of fabric you can think of.  I'm pretty sure there are flour sacks in it, along with scraps from clothing.  Looks to me like nothing she had went to waste.  I love it!

Some of the different fabrics up close:

However, due to the age of the fabrics in the quilt, they are disintegrating in places.  The seams are coming apart in lots of places.  There is no way to restore the quilt, so patching and hand sewing loose seams was the only thing I could do.

The first thing I did was sit with this quilt in my lap while watching TV, and go over it bit by bit, clipping loose threads and strings of fabric that had frayed.  Any seams I could repair with needle and thread, I repaired.  Where there were big holes, I trimmed up the area and  repaired what I could, so that I could hand sew a patch over them.

A couple of the holes after I had trimmed them up in preparation for the patches:

There are a lot of red fabrics in the quilt, so I felt that the patches should be in red.  I found some muted red fabric in my stash.  I also used some beige calico fabric that I felt would would go with the vintage fabrics in the quilt.

A few of the patched areas:

The calico patch!

I love the pattern in this quilt and in fact, I made a small Christmas quilt in the same pattern many years ago.  The one I made is small and I use it as a tree skirt, or put in on display.  I would love to make more quilts like this.  This is the one I made:

Scrap quilts are my favorite and so repairing the old scrap quilt for my daughter-in-law was a labor of love.

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

I had this idea to make "Thankful" pictures for Thanksgiving week from some of the pictures I've taken lately.  My plan was to share one on Facebook each day this week leading up to Thanksgiving.  I'm not a big Facebook fan.  I'm more of a Blog girl! LOL

I love photography as much as my other hobbies of sewing, quilting, gardening, crocheting, etc.  So, I thought I'd share some of the pictures I came up with here to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.

My thanks go to my husband for the use of his hands in this picture.  The beautiful yellow Fall leaves came from the mountains of Tennessee last week.

These toes belong to my youngest granddaughter, Victoria. Love those little toes!

This food is takeout from the Redneck BBQ Lab in Benson, N. C.  If you are ever traveling on I-40 near McGee's Crossroads, you should definitely stop.  They have won so many awards, its crazy.  The occasion for this food was my sister's 70th birthday.  We stopped on the way to her house for a little celebration.  The food is really good!

The Blessing words do not all show up too well, but it is the traditional Blessing my Mama always said before meals when I was growing up.

My sister's cake:

So there you have it.  My "Happy Thanksgiving" to you!