Antique Quilt Repair

I started the repair work on both antique crazy quilts yesterday. The first thing I wanted to do with my commission piece was to repair the beaded area and to re-anchor the beads:



This one patch took me 5 hours to repair. The beading was worked on a net lace and then attached to the quilt. The edge of the lace had deteriorated along the seam so the first thing I did was to sew the lace onto the quilt along that edge. The edge was quite shredded so once I had it secure on the quilt, I went back over the thin area with long straight stitches (black sewing thread) and then I couched those down.

My next task was to re-anchor all the beads. Oooh, that was tedious! I used the tiniest, thinnest beading needle that DMC makes and for many of the beads, I couldn't get the needle to go through. When that was the case, I took a tiny stitch over the thread that ran through the bead. One stitch on each side.

The beads were originally sewn on with the finest silk thread I've ever seen! It's no wonder so many of the beads were loose!

So now I'm ready to replace the deteriorated patches of fabric. I will be starting on that over the weekend.

Once I had the beaded area repaired on that quilt, I moved on to my quilt. I decided to start with this beautiful little velvet star:



The poor little thing was hanging on only by the orange threads in the middle. I appliquéd this piece back onto the quilt and then reinforced the seams of the star onto the quilt. I then removed the orange perle cotton in the middle and replaced those stitches with new perle cotton.

So those are my accompliments for yesterday. After a few chores that I still have to do for today, I will be pulling out my boxes of fancy fabrics and the new things that my mom picked up for me and I will start the process of replacing the damaged fabrics on my quilt. I will take before and after photos for you.

My plan is to try to replace pieces with a similar color and not necessarily the same type of fabric. It's the color that I want to try to keep and that all depends on what I have on hand here to work with.

Stay tuned. This should be interesting! I'll have that history info on my quilt for you tomorrow.

A Treat For You Today!

So many of you have told me that it's nice to see the face behind the blog. The photos of me in Galena are a bit far away so I thought I'd share a couple of close-ups with you today.

These were taken back in March on my mom's birthday.



This is me with my fat little Simba. He's very shy and quiet and doesn't care too much for being photographed. He's very gentle and sweet, and because he's fat, he's very mushy!



And here I am with Nightmare. This little one is my baby. He's been with me since he was 3 weeks old and I truly believe that he thinks I'm his real mother. He has separation anxiety whenever I go outside or leave the house. He sits by the door or the window and paws at it until I come back.

Antique Crazy Quilt Repair Begins

First, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who left me comments regarding my Galena and Field Of Dreams photos. I'm so happy to know that you enjoyed seeing them. Thank you everyone! I love having comments to read even though I don't always reply to them. It's not that I don't want to, it's a matter of time. You know me, I'm always into a lot of different things!

Today, I'm back in the real world and ready to start the repair on my 2 antique crazy quilt projects. I cleaned them both yesterday. What a tedious project that was!

To clean them, I put several layers of cheesecloth over the hose of my vacumm cleaner and worked over the quilts doing a "set & lift" motion. After several hours and quite a bit of cheesecloth (yes, you wouldn't believe how dirty they were), I'm happy to say that they are clean. Or, at least as clean as I can get them.

The first repair that I will make is on my commission piece:



I'm going to start by repairing the beaded area. The beading was worked on netted lace and then sewn into the quilt. I have some beads that are a close match to the antique ones on this quilt so I think I'll be able to replace the missing ones. My plan is to anchor all of the beads to the quilt. Remember, when I complete this, I'll be adding a new back and binding to it so I'll be working through everything that's all ready here.

I plan to meet with the quilts owner on Friday to discuss my ideas with her regarding more embellishing and embroidery. Basically, I want to share my ideas with her first before I go any further on it. So once I have the beading repaired, I'll put this one to the side and figure out what to do with mine.

To be honest, mine feels extremely overwhelming. There's just so much to repair on it. I honestly don't even know where to start. Scott reminded me last night that I don't have to look at the entire "staircase". I just need to take one step at a time. I'll just have to pick a place to start and work from there.

Tomorrow, I will have some interesting information for you on my quilt. My friends Susan and Bennie shared some history with me that you might find interesting!

Back From Galena!

Hi everyone! I'm back! We had the loveliest weekend in Galena, Illinois. I know I've mentioned it before but if you're new to reading my blog, Galena is a gorgeous little historical town located in the northwest corner of Illinois. It's about 2 1/2 hours west of where we live in McHenry, Illinois.

The weather was wonderful this time! 80 degrees and sunny all 3 days.

Since I don't have any stitching to share at the moment, I thought you would like to see a few of the photos we took on our trip. I was finally able to get some nice pictures of the gorgeous rolling hills there:





Does this look like Ireland or what! Not that I've ever been to Ireland but this looks like the photos I've seen of Ireland. The view from the road is breathtaking! It looks like this on both sides.

The northwest corner of Illinois was left untouched by the glaciers so the landscape is nothing but rolling hills. Were we livein Illinois, it's flat as a pancake!

The next photo is The Belevedere House. It's an Italianate style Victorian and my favorite house in Galena:



The highlight of this trip for me was yesterday morning when we drove to Dyersville, Iowa to see Field Of Dreams:



This is where the movie was filmed. As you know, I love baseball and have so much been wanting to see this.

Here's the actual baseball field:



It's not quite the same without the corn but that won't be tall until August!

Ok, here's a fun one for you. Another rare picture of me. I'm standing on homeplate:



I always look so stupid in photographs! We were there at 8 am yesterday and I have to tell you, that wind was quite cold! This part of Iowa is all farmland as far as the eye can see and it is just so wonderful! The only sound was that of birdies singing.

Here's one more photo for you:



Scott and I sitting in the bleachers. Think about this, Kevin Costner sat here!!!

We met the nicest couple there. A retired couple from Florida and they offered to take a picture of Scott and I together. They were so nice!

Well, those are the photo highlights of our trip. There are more photos on my Flickr site. If you'd like to see them, just click on one of the images and that should take you to the rest of the pictures.

We did a bit of antiquing while we were there but I didn't find anything all that exciting. In fact, I only bought myself a necklace and a magazine! That's ok though, it's more about the "being there" for me than the shopping.

Galena does have 2 used book stores and both specialize in out of print books. Guess what I had hoped to find? Yes, I was hoping to find the Crazy Quilt book by Penny McMorris. No such luck though. In fact, I stood there, staring at the very small needlework sections, realizing they didn't have it and yet, expecting it to materialize right before my eyes! Scott keep saying, "Pam, they don't have it. It isn't there." He kind of had to drag me out of the stores! Oh well, I'll find it eventually. Probably when and where I least expect it!

Well, that's it for today ladies! I hope you enjoy seeing pictures of my favorite place in the world! For now, I'm off to start cleaning those antique crazy quilts!

More tomorrow......

The Mozart Journey Complete!

The stitching is complete on this:



Mozart looks happy, doesn't he? I would like to think that he would be pleased with my tribute to him!

I'll assemble this next week when I have some free time. Michael's carries beaded gold purse handles so I need to run up there for a pair.

Also next week, I plan to start work on the antique crazy quilts. My sweet mom was at Hobby Lobby earlier this week and she bought some fabrics for me that will work nicely to replace some of the damaged pieces. I need to pick up some #8 perle cottons in a variety of colors. I usually use #5 on my CQ's but my antique CQ is worked with finer threads.

Quick question for you: Does anyone have any clue as to when varigated threads were introduced? I was looking at my commission quilt and there are varigated threads on there. If I could find out when shaded threads started showing up, it would help me to "ballpark" date that quilt.

Ok everyone, I'll be away from my computer now until Tuesday, May 22nd. We're off to Galena, Illinois for the weekend and this time, I hope to see the "Field Of Dreams" movie set in Iowa!!!

Have a great weekend everyone. I'll see ya on Tuesday!