Cross Stitch Patterns by designer Pamela Kellogg of Kitty And Me Designs

The Blog Of Cross Stitch Designer Pamela Kellogg
Kitty And Me Designs

Add This To

Kitty And Me Designs

Celebrating 35 years of Needlework!!!!

Monday, March 21, 2016

Saving The Past

I think most of us have a fondness and appreciation of old things.  Especially things that are handmade.  Years ago, I found this little piece of an old appliqued quilt in an antique mall:

It was in pretty good shape at the time.  I brought it home, washed it and sewed a back on it.  I stuffed it with polyester fiberfill and called it a pillow.

Over the years it of course has continued to age.  Time is not always so kind to vintage textiles.  It was time for another good cleaning and some repairs.

I washed by hand in my kitchen sink and replaced the missing french knot for the birds eye.  It had a few tiny tears so I tucked a tiny piece of fusible web beneath the tears and ironed those in place.

Finally, I added a piece of lightweight iron-on interfacing to the back and squared it up.

I pulled a few of my 1930's reproduction prints out, soft shades of green and yellow:

I decided to do a border on the top and bottom of the vintage piece using strip quilting which I do on a foundation:

When I finished up the strip piecing, it kind of screamed "new fabric" against the vintage piece.  I didn't want to "olden" it by tea dying or running through my washing machine a bunch of times so instead, I pulled out some of my cream colored laces and sewed strips of that down over or next to the seams:

This definitely softened the look of the new fabrics also adding a feminine quality to it.  Once I completed that, I squared up my "sheet of fabric":

It was at this point that I realized I had made a much bigger piece than what I needed!  I really just wanted about 3 inches on the top and the bottom of the vintage piece.  That's okay though.  I'll save the rest for something else.

Here is the finished pillow:

This now sits in my living room in an antique spindle chair that my father in law gave me.








2 comments:

Lin said...

Really lovely to be able to appreciate that old piece of work in a new setting. Beautiful. xx

Christina said...

I love finding treasures in the antique stores too. It looks great freshened up.

Related Posts with Thumbnails