Vintage Wedding Quilt Reconstruction

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This pink, burgundy and gray beauty is my parent’s wedding quilt, and the story of this quilt starts about 39 years ago…

About the Wedding Quilt

My grandmother, Gail, had an idea to gather signatures from my parent’s wedding guests on gray fabric squares and create a quilt. I know my grandmother was a sewist, but I don’t believe she was an quilter. (Her mother was a quilter, and I actually have a baby quilt that was made by her!) All of the sewing on this quilt was done by my mother and grandmother, which makes me the third generation to get to work on this quilt, and that feels so special.

According to my mom, the quilt was finished, but it was actually turned into more of a comforter than a quilt. The blocks were sewn through to the backing using a zig-zag stitch and filled with a polyester filling, rather than quilt batting. When it was washed for the first time, the filling bunched up and the comforter became lumpy. My mom started to take it apart to fix it, but it was eventually packed away and never finished.

I had actually I never seen this quilt and knew nothing about it. After starting my quilting business, this quilt came up in a conversation with my parents. My reaction was something along the lines of… “What wedding quilt?? Send it to me!!”

My mom mailed me the quilt and the two shams and this is what I opened…

Vintage pink and gray wedding quilt with guest signatures and ruffle trim

Inspecting the Quilt

Take it in.

This was a lot of 1980’s packed into one box. I mean, the colors, the ruffle, oh my. I couldn’t wait to get to work on it. It deserved to be finished and see the light of day.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do with this. I knew I wanted to have it properly quilted and I wanted to update it by removing the ruffle and replacing it with a traditional quilt binding.

Not knowing where to start, I figured I would just pick up where my mom had left off: taking it apart. I needed to remove all of the zig-zag stitching that was keeping the backing attached and then I had to remove the ruffle. Once I had the layers separated and all of the polyester filling removed (and in the trash), I could evaluate the situation.

Close up of zig-zag stitch used to gusset the quilt top comforter

The Plan for Reconstructing a Vintage Wedding Quilt

My original plan was to simply send the “finished” quilt top to the longarm quilter and have it properly quilted. But, once I was able to take a closer look at the quilt top, I realized it was not going to be that simple. Each block had a lot of excess fabric at the seams. And the corners, where four blocks came together, had a lot of extra bulk as well. I doubt a needle could have gone through it. I knew this was not going to work for quilting, so I decided I had to take the blocks apart and piece everything together again properly.

Deconstructing a Vintage Wedding Quilt

So, out came the seam ripper and I went to work disassembling each row at a time. I took care to keep the blocks in order so I could piece everything back together in the same order. For about 2 weeks, this was my nightly task while watching TV.

Seam ripper used to deconstruct the vintage wedding quilt

I ended up with a pile of ragged looking blocks like this… Yikes.

Stack of separated quilt blocks and seam ripper

Next, I ironed each block and took a lint roller to the front and back to remove all the extra threads and leftover poly-fill. I also starched each block as I ironed it. Because this fabric had already been worked with and washed, it had lost a lot of it’s original stiffness, which makes cutting and sewing it more difficult. A good quality, heavy duty starch seemed to fix that problem.

Back side of ironed and cleaned quilt block

Trimming Quilt Blocks

I decided to start by removing the excess fabric at the y-seams of each block. I wanted to remove as much bulk as possible. Using a ruler and rotary cutter, I trimmed each seam allowance down to 1/4″. Some seams had up to 3/4″ extra allowance.

I chose not to reconstruct each block itself because I wanted to maintain as much of the original quilt as possible. The blocks weren’t perfect, but it’s an old quilt, and that’s ok. It was more important to keep the spirit of the original quilt top.

Ruler and seam allowance on a cutting mat

Trimmed seam allowance using a ruler and rotary cutter sitting on top of a cutting mat

Each block was a little wonky and none of them were the same size. So, I decided to square up each block to make piecing them back together a little easier and make the finished rows nice and clean. However, deciding how to do this was slightly complicated. I could either trim the block to allow for the points of the block to meet together nicely or I could trim the block so that the gray signature square was center and level. Ultimately, I decided that it would look more visually appealing to have the signature squares centered and level at the expense of nicely matching points.

I started by removing as little fabric as possible and trimmed the first block down to 10.5″ x 12.5″. But, the second block didn’t have enough fabric for that, so I had to trim down to 10″ x 12″. That seemed to be the right size for the remaining blocks. Again, each block varied slightly, but I just made sure the gray signature square was as centered and level as possible before trimming.

Trimming and squaring a quilt block using a large ruler

Trimmed and squared up quick block sitting on a cutting mat

Trimmed and squared up quilt block and rotary cutter sitting on a cutting mat

There we go… nicely trimmed and squared up quilt blocks. It’s looking better already, isn’t it?

Repairing Vintage Quilt Blocks

Another challenge was repairing a few of these small holes and thin spots. I used a bit of matching gray fabric and patched it with an iron-on adhesive. It seemed to do the trick. I figured the quilting would also help hold the patch in place.

Close up of a small hole in a vintage quilt block

Piecing

The next part was the easiest part in this entire process, piecing the rows. I worked one row at a time, taking care to keep the blocks and rows in their original order. I also had to work around this large center block that was machine embroidered with my parents names and wedding date. This large block also needed to be ironed and trimmed down to match with the blocks surrounding it. I trimmed it down to 23.5″ x 19.5″ and sewed it in the middle of the center rows.

Machine embroidered block for a vintage wedding quilt from 1983

Quilting

Once the quilt top was pieced back together, it was time to send it to the longarm quilter. This thing was an absolute beast. The finished quilt top was 114″ x 92″. There was no way this thing was getting quilted on my small domestic machine with a tiny throat space. Plus, I wanted the quilting to be something special… something that said “1980’s wedding” (haha).

Andrea from Walker Quilt Co. quilted this and she took such special care! I chose the pantograph “Elegant Hearts” by Anne Bright Designs. It had the perfect amount of swirls, curls and hearts. It felt perfect for a wedding quilt from 1983. One of my main concerns was having the quilting stitches obscure any of the signatures or the machine embroidery in the center block. Andrea suggested a very fine, silver thread to help it “disappear” and it was perfect! For the backing, I opted for a simple, solid gray to coordinate with the quilt top. Kona Cotton in the color Ash was a very close match to the gray signature squares. I ordered the 108″ wide quilt backing to avoid having any seams on the back.

Close up of digital edge-to-edge Longarm quilting

Binding

I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was to finally get this quilt back and see it in all of it’s quilted glory. I could not wait to bind this and see it completely finished. For the binding, I used the original backing, which was a large, ivory sheet. It is the same fabric used for the large embroidered center block, so it coordinates perfectly! Plus, I was able to use more of the original quilt, which was important to me.

Finished vintage wedding quilt folded and draped on a bed

Washing

The final test for this quilt, was washing. I was absolutely terrified to wash this quilt for the first time for fear of ruining these signatures. So many of these signatures are from family and friends that have since passed, so maintaining their integrity was incredibly important.

In hindsight, I probably should have tested washing them before finished the quilt… oops.

Ultimately, they washed just fine. The only casualty was some bleeding from the pink and burgundy quilt top into the gray quilt backing. This happened despite washing in cold and using multiple Shout Color Catchers. However, the bleeding was minimal and there wasn’t any bleeding into the signatures blocks, so it seemed a small price to pay for a finally finished wedding quilt.