Deconstructing the Quilt

  This quilt had seen better days.
  Actually it was no one's special quilt by the time it came to us.
  i don't even know who made it.  It was no longer in really good shape when we got it.  A few years back MyGuy decided it was the best thing we had for a draftstopper.
  Most of that time it's been shedding its batting over the floor.
  Not good.

blue stripes: new draftstopper
patchwork quilt on right, with burgundy backing at top

  When my niece told me she was sewing Christmas gifts, i told her that her uncle would like a draftstopper.  Actually, i was tired of the shed batting.
  Old quilts shed worse than corgis.
  And i promised her the remains of the quilt after Christmas.
  So when she delivered on the nice draftstopper, i knew that the quilt needed to come apart.  It needs to be washed, and that batting is definitely not going through the machine.  The quilttop and the base will need to be put in separate pillow cases, though i think both will survive.  Without the batting.

  It's amazing what work went into this quilt that nobody loved.
  i have no idea how old it was.  i do know it was old when i first saw it, back when i was a kid. So it dates from at least my mom's childhood, back in the 20s, 30s.  Maybe as recently as the 40s.  It was made by someone, or a group of someones, in her family, or people they knew.
  Made by hand.  Hand stitched and hand tied.  There seems to be some fabric in it that was new at the time (flour sacks?), as well as the pieces of worn dresses and shirts.
  The backing must have been entirely new fabric for the quilt.

  i got a trash can and began cutting and ripping the batting off.  Because even though it had been shedding too much for too long, most of it was still there.  Max helped me some with pulling and cutting the red yarn that tied the layers together.
  The entire process took maybe 45 minutes, probably less.
  The making of it way back when probably took months.

  And i'm excited to see what my niece will make of the recycled fabric.