*better late than never, right?

It was more than a year ago that my dear father-n-love brought this awesome quilt to our house for some repair.  This quilt was originally put together, well many years ago, maybe even before he was born.  It may have been someone elses before it was passed on to him.  The binding was torn, tattered, and had been used until it was becoming thread bare all the way around.  When it first came to me this is how it looked.  The outside borders were made of a thicker greenish blue strip of fabric. But the center was covered with some thinner fabric that had began to wear through.

Last week when I was making our guest rooms ready for Eric's parents and our nephew I saw this on the shelf in the closet. I had not looked at it much since that first month that Dad had brought it.  With a week before Eric's parents were to be here for Christmas, I found myself sitting on the guest bed with this quilt spread out. Looking at it. Thinking. Trying to give birth to some awesome remedy.  As I shook it out so I could spread it on the bed, the lights over head shone through the quilt to reveal  that there was more than was meeting the eye. I could see patchwork, like a crazy quilt or scrappy quilt below that quilt top.
 

When Dad first brought it to me, I had no idea what to do with it. I love articles that have been passed down through the generations, I love the history that lies within, the memories that have been made with it and the love that was put into making it.  The idea of touching this and trying to repair it was more than I wanted to take on, because at first I had NO IDEAS at all on how to fix it. As I tossed it up by its corners to spread it out and saw the patchwork somewhere in those layers, Eric and I decided to rip the "quilt top" off. What was below was another quilt top. Many of the pieces had holes like the ones in the pics above.

There is a small hole in the stripped pink fabric that actually went all the way through to the other side.  I used one a small piece of fabric to make a patch over this area. It turned out great.

I have to admit that I love the way this quilt looks, as it is right now in this picture. I love the tattered fabric, the loose threads that are pulling away from the well worn fabrics in the quilt.  I love thinking about what the different fabrics might have been: drapes, clothing, cotton fabric from the fabric store, old clothes or feed sacks (which is what Dad said most of them were).

The quilt got an over haul. New top. New layer of batting. Totally new backing and binding. LOVE!

The quilt originally had a wide binding, which I fell in love with. I will be using this wide binding on some of my quilts in this future as well

This is the two pieces of fabric that was taken off the top of the quilt, which revealed the beautiful piecework underneath.  This is the fabrics that I used to make patches for the large and small areas that needed some mending.  This project was one of the most rewarding I have given my time to. We started just a few days before Mom and Dad arrived for the holidays, but I finished it in time to surprise Dad with it!

This is the finished quilt, everything on the front side is original fabrics. 

The backing fabric as well as the binding was some that had been given to me by Mom a few years ago as well as some from my stash.  It was pretty neat to add that fabric back into the quilt too.  I know this meant a lot to Dad, and it really was an honor to have been the one to add a little life back into this beautiful quilt!