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Finishing a Vintage Quilt Top

Last March, a neighbor brought a vintage quilt top to me, asking if I could turn it into a finished quilt.
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As you can see, the top was a Grandma’s Flower Garden. Some investigation showed that it was all hand-pieced and that there were multiple places where a gap had opened up in the piecing. Further, there were some fabrics that were not well-suited for quilting (very large weave) and were falling apart.

I thought that the best plan was probably to find a yellow to match the quilt and use it as a layer under the whole pieced top. Basically, the whole vintage piece would become an appliqué patch. After checking with a few quilty friends, who agreed that my plan was a good idea, I set to work. I bought 6.5 yards of RJR’s solid “Banana Cream Pie.” Setting aside 0.5 yard for binding, I combined the 6 yards into a large rectangle and then set about pressing the pieced part of the quilt, and basting it to the background fabric. It took an absolutely epic amount of time!

From there, I laid out backing and batting and basted again. There were a lot of pins in the quilt! I quilted in a simple stipple as it allowed me the flexibility to tack the edges closely and add extra stitching around holes and other problem areas.

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Here’s the finished top!

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Binding was the same yellow as the background.
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I handed off the quilt to my neighbor a few days before a special event and she gave it as a gift to her daughter. Everyone was very excited to see the quilt finished, 50+ years after it was begun!

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Interesting! I have a vintage top, but it needs some seams resewn, but I’m definitely going to check and see if backing with a similar background would also be good. Thanks for sharing…

  2. Thanks for the explanation on how you finished this quilt. I have 2 Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilts from a great grandmother that I was asked to finish for 2 relatives. You are giving me courage to tackle the project!

  3. Brilliant solution! I finished a vintage quilt for a neighbour and it was so satisfying to return it to the family.

  4. i love how you finished this…and i really love that the holes and problems areas were left in. makes it some much more interesting in my mind. 🙂

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