About eight years ago I bought a handmade quilt at the Mill Hill neighborhood sale. It was in threadbare shape in places, and the rosebud pink backing fabric was very soft but had worn through around the edges. The fabrics are small prints, possibly from the 1930s. The batting is a woven cotton blanket, so it has more weight than usual for its size. It gets daily use on my kitchen couch, and has been run through the wash multiple times. As a result, a lot of the white squares are failing, the cotton has become whisper thin and tears easily. As sad as it looked, the quilt was important enough to me that I devised a way to re-invigorate it.
Aunt Denise passed along some fabric that had belonged to her mother. The hexagonal shapes are all hand hemmed and sewn into clusters. Using an iron-on product I was able to make patches to cover the worst of the damaged areas, which are now being further secured with delicate hand stitching. The old backing was removed completely, and replaced with a light cotton featuring a repeat pattern of a boquet of poppies. The new backing is doubled up and overlaps to provide a one inch border on the front, which has been hand stitched around the perimeter of the front of the quilt.Here is a picture of the result.