Quilt Repair - Fixing the Hole Made by a Dog

A friend asked me to fix her brand new quilt that their puppy chewed a hole in. Preferably before her mom (who made it) came to visit and saw it and preferably in a way that mom wouldn't notice. 

Repairing this one took much more time in the thinking and figuring department than in the actual execution of it. Luckily she had leftover fabric from it being made.

For those interested in how one goes about repairing this kind of thing, I’ll try to explain briefly. Fill in the batting holes with new batting. I did this by placing batting under the hole and tracing around it with a water disappearing marker (Marks Be Gone or the like). I then cut around the outside of my marks and wedged them into place. I did not want holes in between the batting pieces and I wanted it to be snug. I then basted it in place and finish with fusible interfacing to help hold those pieces together. The really small rips in the batting, I simply stitched the rip closed.

Unpick entire area to replace. Measure carefully (because after washing, the fabric has shrunk a bit). Preshrink the fabric, cut carefully, piece together, press and hand stitch back into place.

Hand stitch patch for the back as well.

Measure and mark where the quilting should be. Quilt. Breathe.

Aside from the new fabric being a bit brighter right now (that’ll change as it’s used), you can only spot that it’s repairing from the back. If you like a good I-Spy game, on the picture below, there are 3 glaring (to me) things that show there was a repair. Can you find them?

First you can see the patch, which is smaller than the patch on the front. No help for that because the back was a solid piece to begin with and more pieces on the front had to be replaced or covered because a little rip into one triangle required the whole piece to be removed and replaced. Second, the thread I used was a 60 weight instead of a 40 weight, so it’s thinner. The difference is visible. Lastly, because the front patch is bigger than the back patch, there are two circles that were quilted twice.

You can see the difference, but hopefully after the quilt has been loved and used a while, the color difference will disappear. With a patch on the back, Mom may still find out that it was repaired, but from the front, she'll never know.