Textile Archaeology: Exploring a Vintage Quilt Through Dissection and Repair

 Yesterday morning, while drinking my latte, I read through a string of National Geographic articles about recently discovered hominid remains in the Rising Star cave system of South Africa.  On my giant desktop monitor, I clicked through slide shows of exploration scientists cramming themselves and their equipment into narrow channels of rock as they gingerly worked to free fragile, ancient fossils that would shed new light on our understanding of early human history.

Client's Vintage Summer Quilt, Prior to Repair

And then, I headed up to my studio, and began a delicate excavation of my own, the beginning of a vintage quilt repair that I'm undertaking on behalf of a client.  Although I've never thought about it this way before, I'm sure that a big part of what attracts me to these fraught and often tedious vintage quilt projects is the opportunity they afford for a bit of textile archaeology.  And yes -- that's actually a thing!  

"As fiber folk, we all know the feeling. You look at a handmade textile and you see not just a pretty object, but the hours at the loom or knitting needles, the fiber drafting at the wheel, the alchemy at the dye pot, even the shepherds with their flocks. You can see all the steps and decisions that went into creating that object, all the places where one path or another was chosen. Archaeologists are constantly trying to trace back those paths, to see those moments when a decision had to be made and why. The whys are how we learn about culture in the distant past."

 

         -- Christina Pappas, Textile Archaeologist 

So, back to my client's quilt.  My client is a young mother who brought her toddler along when she dropped off this quilt.  The quilt was given to her husband by his grandmother when he was a child and, although it has tremendous sentimental value to the family, it does not meet any of the criteria that would make it valuable or historically significant.   (If someone does bring me a quilt that may be too valuable to alter, I refer them to a certified quilt appraiser and then we discuss whether they still wish to have any repairs done and how to do it without negatively impacting the quilt's value).  But the bulk of my vintage quilt repairs involve simple quilts like this one that have been loved to the brink of death.

In its original form, the quilt is a 7 x 8 layout of scrappy pinwheel-in-a-square blocks alternating with plain alternate blocks in a blue stripe.  All of the pinwheel-in-a-square blocks have the same red and white stripe on the corner triangles.  I call it a "summer quilt" because there is no batting, and there is no quilting, either -- the pieced top is attached to the backing with knotted ties of a thick white thread.  In lieu of binding, the backing fabric is wrapped around to the front of the quilt, folded under, and stitched down for a finished width of 1/2".

The client's goal for this repair is to salvage the tattered quilt sufficiently that it can be handed down to their daughter for story time snuggling.  I warned the client that all of the fabrics in the quilt are fragile with age and use, so even after repairs improve its appearance, it is not going to be able to withstand heavy use.  She is okay with that, so I agreed to proceed with reconstruction.  I will be reducing the size of the quilt to a 5 x 5 block layout that will result in a finished size of approximately 45" x 45", containing the blocks that are in the best condition.  In the section of the quilt that will be saved, there are four badly deteriorated blocks that I will be replacing with "good blocks" from the portion of the quilt that is being removed.  The removed portion of the quilt will also be the source of any patches needed for repairs, so that all of the fabrics in the quilt will remain original.  And of course, every scrap of fabric removed from the quilt will be saved and returned to the client along with the quilt.

Taking a seam ripper or a rotary cutter to someone else's cherished family quilt is always a bit nerve-wracking.  I feel the weight of the client's trust, knowing that I am altering the quilt in ways that cannot be undone, in order to give it new life for the next generation.  It's like I'm amputating a diseased limb that is too far gone to save.  However, this is the stage of the process where the discoveries are made as well.  

This Top Was Hand Pieced, But in a Heavy-Weight Thread

I was surprised to discover that this quilt top was entirely hand pieced in neat, even stitches, but with a heavy-weight thread.  It's comparable to 12 weight Aurifil or a perle cotton embroidery thread, and may be the same thread that was used to tie the quilt layers together.  Yet the self-binding of the quilt was stitched by machine, with a stitch length so tiny that I could barely get my seam ripper in there to release the seam.

Half Inch Self Binding Was Stitched By Machine

This, to me, is an interesting paradox, as many quilters today will happily piece their tops and even quilt them with their sewing machines, yet feel strongly that hand stitched applied binding is the only acceptable way to finish the edges of a quilt.  The hand piecers I know today would never dream of finishing their quilts with a machine stitched binding.  This is a reminder that the tyranny of the so-called Quilt Police is a modern phenomenon.  Quilters of the past were more likely to combine hand and machine work and to use whatever thread happened to be in their sewing basket, whereas today's quilters fret more about using the "right" threads and the "right" methods, as dictated by those deemed to be experts.

Another discovery I make in the "dissection" phase is the lost vibrancy of the faded quilt fabrics, hidden and protected from UV light within the safety of the seam allowances:

A Fabric That Appears to be Plain Muslin Was Once a Vibrant Purple Print

The pinwheel blocks that appear to have plain white muslin triangles were once a vibrant purple print!  The white flower silhouettes on the black print fabric are what was left behind when the brightly-colored flowers faded away, and the red and white stripe used to be a much more vivid red.

I do not take a scissors to a vintage quilt top and cut into any of the blocks I'm removing, so it took me a little over an hour to free the section of the quilt top that I'm saving from the rest of the quilt.   I used my seam ripper to carefully open the hand pieced seams between the blocks, and then used my rotary cutter and ruler to trim the backing fabric about an inch beyond the edges of the blocks so I can replicate the self-binding on the two new edges of the quilt.  Today's task will be to remove four good blocks from the damaged portion of the quilt that was removed and transfer them like a skin graft to replace blocks that are too far gone to save.

I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

BOMs Away at What a Hoot Quilts