Further Quilt Repair
I just so happened to find a chunk of quilt at some thrifting something I was at awhile back. Someone had taken a commercially made quilt, I think from Target, and cut a chunk off of it. I got the chunk for a couple bucks. It’s long and skinny, the perfect length and width for laying on the couch! Booyah, person who gave away their quilt chunk! What were you thinking?
Of course, there was one long edge that was just open to the world, and we can’t have that. How indecent! So I took it to the craft store with me and pipcked some quilt edging that matched. The important part of this terribly blurry-because-I-craft-at-night picture is where it says “Extra Wide Double Fold”. There are several kinds of this stuff (quilt binding? quilt edging? I’m not sure), but the double fold means that this thin strip of fabric is folded in half, and in half again, so that the edges are all tucked inside. I prefer the look and feel of that to the single fold. And be careful, because there is some that’s not folded at all, and I don’t even see the point of that.
Flapjack has fallen in love with this quilt btw, and was an adorable impediment the entire time I was working on it.
I opened up one package of the binding, and started jamming it onto the edge of the quilt. This process is a bit tricky. I left an extra inch or so hanging off the end so I could tuck it in later. Your goal is to get the edge of the quilt pressed into the crease on the binding, so that the binding wraps around the edge. You will sew through the bottom edge of the binding, through the quilt, and through the binding on the other side. My sewing machine can’t handle that, so I did it by hand. (There’s Flapjack again. Aren’t you jealous of how cute my dog is??)
Once I had one whole edge sewn down, I went back, tucked the ends in, and sewed them shut. Here’s the finished end, but I had to use the flash so the colors aren’t great.
The hardest part for me was keeping the central fold of the binding touching the raw edge of the quilt. It kept creeping upwards, so I would end up with very little quilt to sew through. I think I did a pretty good job, other than that. For now, I have only completed on edge, and I’m not sure if I’ll do the others. The colors look cool as they are, and I have to complete NEW crafts for you piranhas. You’re insatiable!
Quilt Repair Finale
A few of you may remember one of my early blog posts about repairing this quilt. It’s a family hand-me-down from the 80’s or 90’s, and it was in rough shape by the time I got it. There were whole pieces missing or loose. Clever Chick to the rescue!
Techinically, Clever Chick’s Mom to the rescue also! Once I had the majority of the repairs done, and a whole new sheet tacked on the back, I passed it off to her for the quilting part. She has some super amazing sewing machine that can quilt all that crap together. I don’t, so she stepped up. She even put edging all the way around. The corners, however, seemed to foil even her mad skills.
The first thing I did was make sure the edging lined up with the edges of the quilt. I then folded one end inside itself, and sewed it shut.
Like this:
After that, I folded the other side over, and trimmed off some extra, leaving the end to extend about half an inch past the edge of the quilt.
I folded the raw edge under and pinned it in place, like so:
I then sewed that shut. It’s not the most square corner ever made, but the other 3 worked better, and this was my first one ever, so that’s probably pretty good.
Plus, I had to stop and take pictures every two minutes for you people, so it’s not perfect. Yes, maybe I was a little distracted watching True Blood (Team Alcide!!), but wouldn’t you be with this guy on the screen??
Be really careful googling more pictures of him online; there are LOTS with his shirt off. I think I had a tiny heart attack while finding this one. But I had to choose just the perfect picture. For you. Yeah, for you, the readers. I have lost the ability to form sentences. So, the end. Enjoy!
Quilt Repair
My mom-in-law gave me an old quilt they had lying around the house. It was in pretty rough shape, and she doesn’t really have the time or inclination to fix something that busted up, so I took over. It’s probably from the 80’s, or 70’s at the earliest. If you come across some kind of antique quilt, for the love of all the snakes in Texas, please do not do what you will see here! Antiques should be left alone, unless an expert (or the Antiques Roadshow) tells you otherwise.
This is just one example of the injuries to this quilt. There were several patches missing, or so damaged that I just decided to add a patch over them, rather than trying to reattach the damaged pieces. To do so I dug through my fabric collection, and found pieces as similar to the fabrics already in the quilt as possible. Fortunately, this is a true scrap quilt, with a huge variety of fabrics, so I was able to use stuff I had on hand.
You can see the craziness inherent in the quilt. At the bottom are some of the fabrics I planned to use. To add a patch, I basically eyeballed everything. This quilt is very in-exact anyway, which made it very simple to repair. If it had some kind of precise pattern to it, this would have been a lot harder. I just picked a chunk of fabric that I thought would look good, cut a piece big enough to cover the wound, plus about 1/2 inch all the way around for hemming.
The way I did this was to lay the quilt out, lay the patch on top of the damaged area, and fold the edges of the patch under, to prevent it unraveling in the future. If you leave the raw, cut edge of the fabric hanging out it will slowly disintegrate, which is why you fold the raw edge under, which is called hemming. Fold it under, and pin the patch flat onto the quilt. Feel free to go all the way through the quilt. Don’t worry about only sewing onto the top layer, because sewing all the way through is what makes it quilted.
Personally, I didn’t iron anything, but you can iron each patch after you’ve folded the edges under. This ensures that the fabric stays in that position, and you don’t have the edge keep popping out. My iron unfortunately vanished in the move, so I just pinned the crap out of everything.
The best way I found to sew this is called a running stitch. The way I do this is not necessarily perfect, but it’s easy. You don’t go up and down all the way through the fabric. I hold the area that’s going to be sewn, and fold it in half along the line that will be sewn. I then sew through both layers at once, sticking the needle in the back, pulling all the way through, then sticking it in the back again. Let me go fabricate some pictures I didn’t take at the time, then I’ll be right back.
You can see the pin on the left, and the needle going all the way through in the middle. I used white thread on dark fabric so it would show up, but generally you’d want to use something that blended better.
This is the first stitch. You can see I pulled the needle all the way through, and inserted it into the same side as before. The maroon fabric is the patch, by the way, and the blue is original to the quilt.
I made big, fat stitches so they’d be easier to see on my poopy little camera. Generally, you’d want to make smaller stitches. Here you can see what the series of stitches should look like.
The running stitch is great because it’s easy, fast, and super versatile. I’ll be referring to this in an upcoming post, so be sure to practice! I’ve also heard this called a whip stitch, which makes sense. You hand makes a whipping motion as you do a series of stitches.
Always remember this is a hand-made item, so all the little imperfections, and uneven stitching make it look more authentic. This is not the process you’d use for creating a quilt from scratch, but you can use this method to patch or sew a ton of things.
This is a shot of the (mostly) repaired quilt. It’s now sound enough to be used and run through the washing machine, but it needs a whole new backing put on. The backing is the plain fabric on the back which holds the whole thing together. My plan for this is to buy a king sized sheet at the thrift store, and just layer it on top of the fabric already on the quilt. Fabric at Hobby Lobby, or wherever, generally is only a yard wide, which means you’d have a seam running down the middle of the quilt. This is generally a no-no, but extra wide fabric is expensive.
Hence, thrift time!! And my loyal minions know I loooove me a thrift store! Sheets are usually cheap, and I make sure to get a high thread count, which makes it more durable. That’s a tale for another post, however.
My Attempts at Cleverness 