The unexpected gifts of Christmas

The holidays were enjoyable and fruitful. Dane and I went to New Braunfels to spend Christmas with his mom and brother. We were both spoiled with awesome gifts, including a crock pot for me and a Nintendo DS for Dane.

The best part was the day after, when mom-in-law Jackie and I went to Wimberley, a cute little town that's 30 minutes from New Braunfels. We looked around in their cute little shops, and I found not one, but two old handmade quilts for VERY reasonable prices. They only needed some minor repairs, which I feel comfortable doing myself. The first quilt was $60 and is made from feedsacks. The second, a $30 solid colored quilt, is completely hand pieced.

I'm still learning the best settings for my camera, so some of these pictures came out a bit yellowed and unclear.


Wonderful feedsack prints, and a very soft backing. The only problems with this quilt are the split seams on some of the blocks, and a burn mark that goes completely through all layers and will need to not only be patched with a swatch of batting, but the pinwheel block will have to be recreated with a reproduction print.


The feedsack quilt spread out on our bed. The very dark spot in the center of the quilt is where the hole is.


Closeup of the hole. It shouldn't be too difficult to repair. I found a nice off-white quilter's flannel to use for the back and preserve the softness.


The solid colored quilt. The front is rather nice in a geometric way, but what really sold me is the print used for the back.


What a cute print! And this is the only picture where I got my flash settings correct, which is why it's so nice and bright.


This is the only spot of damage on this quilt. The hole isn't even the size of a silver dollar, but it knocked down the price dramatically. The antique shop owner said she was about to cut up this quilt to make pillows! Blasphemy!!!

So, I have my work cut out for me. I looked at some tips online for repairing old quilts, and I'll be documenting the origin of these quilts, what issues there were, and what was repaired, to help preserve as much as possible about their history.