Last year at the Houston Quilt Festival I was inspired by an exhibit using heirloom pieces of cloth.This is my quilt using my old stuff. On my mission to tell you how I got to the finished product and the mistakes I had to correct … I am telling you how I diverted disaster.
The fabric except for the background are old dollies, crocheted pieces, lace, a silk skirt and a glove. I found them in a box of collected items. Except for the silk skirt … they were items that my mother, mother-in-law, and step mother had saved. The silk skirt was a throw away in a pile of fabric at a fiber arts meeting.
I had the quilt blocked and almost finished. I had trouble with removing some of the chalk markings on one of the dollies. So after trying everything on could on a small area. I washed parts of the quilt. Sounds good … it did not work. The washing managed to make things worse. I did not prewash anything. The pieces had been washed and ironed many times. The starch that had been left in the fabric for years congealed into areas leaving spots. I decided to wash the whole quilt. What could happen? How bad could it be? I found out.
The kid glove (probably my mother-in-law’s) shrunk and turned into a nasty shade of yuck.. After stomping my feet and yelling, I had to find a way to solve the problem. Cutting out the glove, that had turned to a heavy piece of parchment… Replacing it with one that I made out of ultra suede. Taking the buttons off the old glove and stitching it on the new glove. The quilt laid flat again. Yay!!!!!!! Then I bound it with the fabric from the silk skirt that someone did not want. Sewed on the sleeve. But in the tradition of not everything going smoothly… I sewed the sleeve on the wrong end and had to take it off and do it over. Now all I need is a label and a title. Any ideas????
Pauline Quilts 