Vintage Pink I

I feel a little guilt over this one, but it's provided much thoughtfulness, some resignation, but also a degree of revisioning, and I think that's all ok. It all started when my buddy Louise/@imfeelincrafty happened upon bags and bags of quilts that had been left on the curb for garbage pick-up. True story. I'll spare you the details, but in short, she shared a few with me, and at first, I really thought I could give this one a new life.



The main problem with it was all the sashing. At one time it had been tied rather than quilted, and everywhere it had been tied, there were now holes.



Also, the binding was totally worn and needed to be replaced.



My original plan was to unpick all the blocks - 30 of them - from the quilt, and resash them and go from there. As I started in, I discovered that rather than batting, the quilt was filled with a flannel blanket. That definitely gave me a smile.



Unfortunately, I encountered a few pretty insurmountable issues. The thread holding the blocks in place was like twine. It was immensely difficult and time-consuming to release the blocks from the quilt top.... like one stitch at a time. And once I did have a few blocks released, their odd shapes and severe fading let me know it would be near impossible to sash them again in a way I'd be pleased with.



Let's just say I re-evaluated and have a whole new plan now. It's not what I had originally hoped for, but it will still let the quilt blocks have a second life, and in this case, I think that's good enough.

See the #garbagequilts hashtag on Instagram if you'd like to see more of Louise's finds.