Third in a series of five blog posts about Christmas quilts, today's post is about a rescued star quilt.
Fifteen or so years ago we were strolling through the Bay City Antiques Mall and I happened to spy a quilt that was red and green and pink. The pink should have been white, but the quilt had apparently been washed, and the red dye had stained the white fabric pink.
"I think I could rescue that quilt," I told Ed as we both handled and looked over what seemed to be an irreversible situation. Susan Fuquay, the designer of yesterday's Simpleworks quilt had just written in her magazine, "American Quit Retailer," about her saga of having the reds run in her first sample of the red and green Simpleworks quilt. She told about "moving the dye" which meant using a surfactant like Synthrapol (think, mild soap) and submersing the quilt time and again until the pink water turned clear.
That Christmas, I found the damaged, pink stained star quilt, the one in the photo above, under the tree with my name on it. "You said you thought you could fix it," Ed said. "Now you can try."
The end result, after about six or eight washings, was this delightful star in star quilt that we enjoy so much every holiday. The pink is gone and I often wonder about the quiltmaker or maybe her child (daughter? son? niece? nephew?) who abandoned this quilt.
Surely there is a story that lies in these stars.
Tomorrow's quilt -- tiny trees and some wool batting.
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