The poor thing was loved to pieces, and Jessica asked me if I could rescue it for a few more years of cuddles. Challenge accepted!

As before, a disclosure: I know little about professionally restoring and conserving quilts, so please don’t look to me for authority. I just try to solve the problem with the resources I have, and we’re not trying to keep these things in museum display condition! We’re just trying to love them a little longer

The first thing I did was to separate the layers. It had a thin flannel sheet in the middle as batting (that had mostly turned into shaggy handfuls of lint) and the backing flannel had long since given up most of its fuzz. It was once tied through with something akin to perle cotton, but most of the ties had torn through or come unknotted.

The front was mostly polyester (you can see that some pieces were once garments – they had seams in them!) and a few squares of velour, now shredded to pieces.

I tossed the middle, and put the back and front through the wash. That polyester is bulletproof… when the apocalypse comes this quilt, the cockroaches, and Keith Richards will be the only things left standing!

I found some vintage polyester on Etsy (a trendy Kelly green with white polka-dots), and replaced all the velour squares with it.

Preserving the alpine print flannel on the back was important to Jessica. It was terribly threadbare and full of holes, so I culled the best chunk of it, and appliquéd it over some new green flannel.

And then added another flannel layer to it for batting, and sent it off for a quilt spa day with Nancy Stovall.

The quilt was originally envelope (or pillowcase) bound – no binding, and tied. Denser quilting makes the fabric in quilts last longer, but there’s no way to long-arm something AND envelope it. So we went with traditional layering, and I went shopping for polyester to make a binding.

The quilting proved challenging… all those chunky poly seams and intersections did not want to glide under the machine foot unattended, so Nancy ended up hand guiding it into swirls that artfully missed the problem spots.

I found a navy poly, and cut a 3” binding from it. What an adventure… it didn’t want to press in half, nor turn nice corners.

It’s back home with Jessica and Steve now. And I hear their pup is thrilled to have it on the bed!

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SQUILT is a valid word in my family – it means Special Quilt, and is reserved for the most honored quilts: the “loveys,” the “woobies,” the ones that achieve Velveteen Rabbit-like wearing out because they’ve been blankie-dragged through good times and bad. They’re not competition-worthy specimens, but they are fiercely fought over when it’s time to veg on the couch.

Squilts are the ones we’ll run to save in a disaster.

The word was first coined for this quilt, whose official title at the time of making (20 years ago!) was Spaceman Spud’s Squilt.

My son, Steve, and I are both big fans of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and the adventures of Calvin’s alter ego, the alliteration-loving Spaceman Spiff. Steve (sometimes called Spud), like many young boys, had a healthy interest in space adventures which was supported by a trip to Space Camp in Florida when he was 10, and endless sets of early Space LEGOS®. We came up with the idea that I would make him a space-themed quilt, and I began to collect fabrics for it.

Sometimes the things you’re looking for just aren’t out there, but it was a time rich in fabrics that would work: stars, suns, moons, planets and galaxies, celestial prints, zodiac constellations, spaceships, and whatnot.  A year later I began the quilt, using the book Square Dance, by Martha Thompson*. It was all the rage at the time

I finished it right in time for Steve to have a bad bout of pneumonia. He spent a couple of weeks on the couch with it, breaking it in. It quickly became his favorite Squilt, and despite owning many others**, it still is.

When I went to visit him this summer, it came home with me in the hopes that I could shore it up for another 20 years of love.

The inexpensive flannel on the back had become very threadbare, and was worn through in lots of places.

The binding was completely shredded.

Several spots on the front were worn and sun damaged. The cheapest of the fabrics (I wasn’t as discerning 20 years ago as I am now) were faded and showing a lot of wear from the quilt not being quilted densely.

We decided not to replace any of the front fabrics – frankly, I would almost need to re-make it. In the end, we opted to put on a new back (right over the original), re-quilt it with a denser, long-arm, edge-to-edge pattern, and re-bind it. I should stress here that I know very little about quilt restoration and conservation, so please don’t look to me for professional advice for that! Steve just wanted to love this squilt for a few more years without substantially changing it, so this was the best we came up with.

I enlisted my friend Nancy Stovall to do the quilting. She chose a great space-y, swirly design that added a lot of stabilization to the shifting fabrics (I had just quilted it in the ditch 20 years ago), but still left the quilt with its comforting suppleness. Let me tell you, Warm & Natural batting that has been loved for 20 years is a wonderful thing. It still has all its integrity (no balling up or migration), and yet softens up to drape like buttah. We didn’t want to lose that as it was one of the best things about snuggling up with this quilt.

On the back went heavy, high-end, woven Mammoth Flannel from Kaufman Fabrics. Hopefully it will wear a lot longer than the original chain store flannel. This quilt is proof positive that quality materials will last longer. Every cheap fabric in it is suffering, while all the Hoffman celestial prints are still going strong.

Finally, a new binding. I usually do double bias binding on all my quilts, with a hand finish. Bias lasts longer, and while it still wears out, it doesn’t split as easily as straight binding. And I’m proud to say I unpicked every stitch of the original hand binding finish, so I think I can say my handwork is good enough to hold up!

I have half the binding left to finish (yes, I have lots of ORANGE clips!) so it will be going home to Steve soon. It’s never been away from him so he’s anxious to get it back!

** Steve’s Rule for Mom’s Quilting: For every quilt made for any purpose, there will be one quilt made for Steve. He has informed me that I am woefully behind in my obligations since beginning Hunter’s Design Studio!

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The first quilt is one I made about 20 years ago:

This quilt is known in my family as “The Black and White Quilt That Wasn’t Supposed To Be Green” and has been a “working quilt” for quite some time. The pattern is called Milky Way, from Rotary Roundup by Judy Hopkins and Nancy J Martin. This book and its sister, Rotary Riot are still great books for block-based stash-busting ideas. I remember collecting black and white fabrics for ages to make it. When it came to the 4-patches, I tried dark red (went brown), navy (disappeared), turquoise (screamed too brightly), and finally the green. I ended up making several other quilts from all those rejected 4-patches!

The quilt was mostly employed as a cover for my white couch, especially if we were slouching on it with our dinners. When my son moved away 9 years ago, it went with him. Somewhere along the line, an ex-girlfriend grabbed it to put between her car (that was stuck in snow) and the car that was pushing her out. The quilt came back from that experience with a huge L-shaped tear in it, all the way through to the back side.

We decided that, although the quilt has plenty of years left in it as a beach/car blanket, restoring it to its former glory wasn’t necessary. Whew! I no longer have any of those fabrics in my stash. So I went through my scrap and test block piles, and dug out some funky stuff. I stabilized the tear on both sides using Heat Press Batting Together Tape,  glue basted the edges of some scraps/blocks down, straight stitched the edges, and then stippled through it heartily.

It’s not a terribly elegant solution, but it’s okay. Function matters more than form here, and we’ve decided to just keep patching this one, like the Japanese technique called boro. I think it might become an interesting document of my fabric history at some point, and if nothing else, I hope my son and his wife have some great picnics on it!

Next up is this one:

It’s mostly polyester double-knits! It was made by my daughter-in-law’s grandmother, and has great sentimental value to her. She asked if I could do something to make it last a bit longer, and I’m honored to be trusted with it. So this is the next one under the needle, and I’ve already ordered some vintage double knit from Etsy to replace some velour squares that are in shreds. I’ve never sewn this type of thing before, so I anticipate quite an adventure.

Stay tuned!

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