The sewists and quilters in my family have always been practical women: The mentality of “Make things you can use or wear, or don’t make them at all!” is pretty close to the mantra they all held and hold…one I also carry with me.

This quilt my great grandma made was and still is no exception to that mentality! It’s actually unclear when exactly she made it, but I do know my dad received it from her when he was quite young and I inherited it this year. I also know it’s much older than me by at least 10 years and I’m 29. I can remember countless moments growing up when I would lug it out of the closet to wrap up in or pulling it off my parents’ bed in the wintertime.

 As you can see, it’s a scrappy log cabin quilt tied to finish made with all sorts of different fabrics in true scrappy fashion, with a fair amount of hand stitching.

The backing is the most luxurious blue velvet, I can’t believe how soft it still is after at least 40 years. Due to the fabrics used, it has an amazing weight to it that you can’t help but want to cozy up with.

I just adore so many of the fabric choices found in the panels:

But all the cozying and wallowing is bound to take its toll on any sewn item, let alone a supple queen sized quilt.

Since most of the disrepair is panels themselves getting threadbare, I have more options than if entire panels just came off (which actually is the case with another even older quilt from when my dad was a child.)

I could replace the panels with new fabrics, probably with some nice hand-stitching… deciding the fabrics would be quite daunting in and of itself!

But, I could also mock up some era-appropriate embroidery to simultaneously mend and embellish this quilt.

I could also do a combination of both concepts with or without appliqué.

So many choices!

Stay tuned for my next installment where I discuss the designs and decisions I will have made by then.