We’ve got a nineteen- or twenty-year-old quilt in our home that is still getting daily use. I didn’t make it — we purchased it on holiday in the Finger Lakes one year. It has had some small repairs made along the way, most by me.
Once we took it to Berlin, Ohio for repairs. Berlin is a small town in the middle of Ohio’s Amish region. You can learn more about Berlin, OH here.
We took the quilt to Berlin because it had a three-corner tear in the top, off to one side, which I had taken a stab at sewing. My repair wasn’t too bad, but over time even my repair was fraying, and we needed a sturdier fix. The lady at the shop took the quilt and said to come back in an hour. We left, had breakfast, and returned to find a neatly hand-sewn, practically invisible repair. She charged us $7.50 and apologized for charging us so much. Their policy was to charge a minimum of a half hour’s rate, but she felt the repair wasn’t a half hour’s work.
Now we are at the point where it would probably take many, many, many hours to fix what’s wrong with our quilt. It comes down to age, use, and fraying fabric. The binding needs to be replaced. I’ve overcast stitched about half of the circumference, but it needs more. A couple of the fabrics used in various patches are noticeably fraying, and when you look closely, other fabrics aren’t that far behind. We are beyond the point of mending by sewing a few stitches. Really, whole patches need to be replaced. And I don’t have any matching fabric, and under no circumstances would I attempt to replace patches myself.
Telling Quilt Time
Eventually fabric frays, despite care,
despite hands smoothing faded blossoms
scattered over tumbling quilt blocks.
You can say: should have used a tighter weave.
Or say conscientious repairs daily allow
timelessness to prevail. Prevail? Predominate?
Preordained, that's what this was. Aftershocks
of too many laundry loads to be folded,
too many times a box or bag snagged the weft.
All good things? Or just all things?
Fix it with a bit of gold, embroider over faults.
Cross-stitch, star stitch, hem stitch.
If always possible, we'd be overrun, over-
whelmed with half-wanted, half-feared,
half-filled. Half-stitched by hand and half
run through by machine. Zig zag all you want.
At base, thread is just thread, thought
just thought, articulated or art or not.
What’s next for our quilt?
We haven’t decided what to do. We could put it on a guest bed, for example, where it won’t get daily use. That would extend it’s life.
We could take it to Berlin, and see if the quilters there think patches and binding replacement are worthwhile.
We could see if it could be used as the backing for a new quilt top. That is like installing new cupboard doors over old cupboards. Quilt renovation, if you will.
We’ll have to decide pretty soon, speaking in quilt time, which I guess works much more slowly than dog years.
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