On occasion a customer sends me an antique quilt top to recover. One particular customer sends me antique “carded wool” quilts to have a new top made for. Since it’s been a couple years since I did one of these, I’m blogging my journey with this one in the hopes that I’ll have a reference for the next time.
The quilt came to me, already recovered once, and tied:
After talking with the customer, the new quilt top to recover it was made out of 1930’s reproduction prints. Here’s a portion of it:
Today I started working on uncovering exactly what was underneath. First I need to remove a gazillion ties:
And then find a way to smooth out the carded wool that’s inside a deteriorating cotton quilt, inside the plaid fabric. I’m thinking this deconstruction to reconstruct is going to be the trickiest part. But I won’t know for sure until I get the outer fabric off:
The biggest problem is that the muslin covering the wool batting is disintegrating as it’s touched. My thought process, at this point, is to utilize the longarm and flannel sheeting. If I load the new backing onto the longarm, spray baste a flannel sheet as I go, then insert the carded wool layer, laying another flannel sheet (or similar weight flannel) over it, I’ll be enclosing the wool and keeping it all from shifting when it’s removed for the new ties.
This will be tied, the carded wool is too thick (an inch in some places) to attempt to longarm quilt, even on my workhorse of a Gammill.
I’ll post progress on this as I go.
Quite a challenge! And a whole bunch of hours and tedious work! Many blessings..