If you’ve been following, you’ll know all about this disaster of a vintage quilt and how I’m rescuing it piece by piece. I’ve replaced all of the seriously damaged pieces in each of the 16 rings so it’s on to the damaged and/or missing white fabric throughout the quilt top.

This is what I’m faced with…over much of the quilt the white fabric is either very damaged or missing entirely, the same for much of the quilt batting.

After deciding not to try and replace the batting, I pull out a huge roll of soft white wide lace.

After positioning the lace over the damaged white fabric, using a very small tight zig-zag, I stitch at the outer edges of the pieced circle pieces.

The red line shows you where I stitched down the white lace, the blue line shows where the straight edges of two pieces of lace were slightly overlapped and were also zig-zag stitched.

After zig zag stitching, it was easy to trim away the lace that overlapped the block circle pieces.

I like the look of the lace but it leaves these white areas looking a little boring so…

I hunt up this yardage and pull out my Accuquilt cutter and heart shaped die.

I like that these hearts add interest but don’t steal the show.

Using a matte finish light pink thread, the hearts are machine applique stitched.

The white on white was at some times hard to follow and it helped to mark both the bottom point and top dip of each heart before stitching.

My marks were made with a Frixion pen, easily made invisible with a quilt touch of my iron.

Just to add a bit of interest, I chose a different heart fabric for the outer white areas of the quilt.

And then it was time to address the inner melon shaped pieces of the blocks. Just like I showed you in the previous blog post, I made a template for this melon piece. The eyelet fabric worked nicely.

Elmer’s Washable School Glue once again makes this quilt rescue easier. Once I’ve completely finished this rescue I will send the quilt through the washer and dryer and the glue will be history.

With the repairs completed, it’s time to add all the embellishments, bits and pieces of laces, trims, maybe some machine decorative stitching, ribbons, buttons and such.

I am loving the transformation of this old well loved, worn, torn and cut in two quilt! Remember how my project began? Here’s a pic:

Stay tuned for update #4!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and blessings, Rhonda