Jayna's First Quilt from Wilma

A beautiful quilt! This quilt top was made and gifted to Jayna by her birth mother, Wilma shortly before Wilma lost her struggle with cancer. 

I was asked to finish it. We found a lovely olive fabric for the backing and the quilting is a pantograph call Plumeria by Urban Elements. The thread is Glide and Glide 60 Cream.

But there's more to this story. From the front, the quilt top was perfect. All the corners and points were lined up to perfection. It was ironed flat, no ripples at all. However, when you looked at the back of the quilt top there were many area, particularly around the thin green stripes of the central square on point. Some of the seams were so narrow that they were ripping out or if they hadn't yet, they certainly would once the quilt was used.

How could I fix this? I needed to strengthen the integrity of the quilt without ruining the integrity of the design. I asked some quilting groups of which I was a part and most said to redo in someway or other, but I didn't have the same fabrics, nor could I ask Wilma for scraps. I didn't want to swap a new fabric for what was in there. This was from Wilma and I wanted it to remain as Wilma planned it. Plus, cost was an issue as well. To have me redo would have been labor (and therefore) cost intensive.

In the end, what I did was to take in the seams a little more (up to 1/8") which distorted ever so slightly the perfection of the square, but after quilting, it shouldn't be that noticeable. And then to keep it from ripping out I used some sewable Heat n Bond, fusing strips to white fabric which I then fused to the underside of the top to reinforce those seams that were the weakest. I then proceeded as I normally would to quilt it. 

All in all, we were both pleased with the way it turned out. The back was the perfect color to match the front. To see the corrections, you would have to know what to look for in the front. Though it wasn't included in the cost, I couldn't let this quilt go back to Jayna without a quilt label telling the who, what, why, where, when of the quilt's story.