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.

Mama's Vintage Bread Box

We are still cleaning out Mama's house and what an adventure it has been! Lots of hard work, sprinkled with a few tears, memories and rewards.  I feel like this labor of love is something we are doing for our Mama.  She's right there with us.

Saturday, one brother was cleaning out an old wooden cabinet located under the carport and ran across another treasure. I don't remember this bread box at all and I am estimating that it is from the late 1940s to 1950s. The lid was pretty beat up and rusty, but the rest of it was in good condition. 

Beside it in this picture is a vintage metal sand bucket, found in the attic.
 

Before picture of vintage breadbox.

And what else would a mother store in an old bread box?  Of course!  Sewing patterns!

Yes, I did wear clothes like these and in fact remember wearing two of these outfits to school in the 5th grade.

I think the flowers on the front are beautiful.

Yesterday afternoon, after emptying the box, I decided to work on the lid.  I sanded it and wiped off the rust dust with a soft cloth.  Then I taped newspaper sheets on the floral sections to protect them from paint.  I already had a can of red spray paint.  It looks much better, but still retains that chippy, rusty, vintage look.

After the lid was painted.

I am planning to incorporate it into our farmhouse décor, along with some other vintage items that belonged to Mama.  I've been studying blogs and Pinterest for ideas.  Some other things of Mama's that will work with it are her flour sifter, rolling pins, small wooden bowl, wooden handled kitchen utensils, her biscuit cutter, iron frying pans and some vintage bowls. A future post!

I'm linking to NIFTY THRIFTY TUESDAY at Coastal Charm.

Mama's Vintage Treasures -Teapots

These two teapots have been a part of my Mama's home for a very long time. They doubled as decoration and as a storage place for receipts. She would stick store receipts, especially at Christmas time, in there in case they were needed later on.   We never drank hot tea at our house and to this day I don't care for it at all!  But sweet iced tea is always welcome.

The white one with the blue flower is the oldest.  I remember it as a child and I know anything I remember as a child is old (grinning).  The other one must have came later.  I'm not sure where either of them came from.  The doily they are sitting on was made by my Grandmother.