Re-Furbishing a Worn Quilt & Embroidery Goals

Here's my first UFO project for the year.  No, not Chaucer the cat, but what he's so grandly made a bed of.

This is a full size quilt my Grandma May made for me in the late 1960's, the last quilt she hand-quilted.  Grandma made all 10 children, the many grandchildren and maybe some of the great grandchildren a quilt.

Made of left over pieces from clothing she made for herself and my cousin Judy and maybe others.  I got Judy's hand-me-downs as I was a bit younger but built the same.  Grandma quilted it with the diagonal lines you see across the blue patch.

Over the years it has had a lot of use and many of the patches and a good portion of the domestic backing had holes or hung in shreds.  A lot of the quilting lines have disintegrated also.

I repaired the patches by appliqueing new patches on.  I found cotton fabric in 60's patterns, thankfully that part was easy, and to make it blend in with the older faded pieces I used the backside facing outward.

I got a huge white sheet at the thrift shop for $2 to use for the new backing, safety pinned it in place and would occasionally quilt on it.  I am quilting inside the patches following the seams, that way I can preserve Grandma's quilting but have a secure backing.  I left the original backing and the original patches (shreds & all) in place, just worked over them.

As you can see I am a practical quilter who does not worry about getting 12 stitches to the inch, I doubt I could see ones that tiny anyway.  I quilt the way Grandma did, I'm about the same age she was when she made this quilt.  It's about half done at this point so I don't know if it will get finished in February or not but I am shooting for the end of March for sure.

Other UFOs I will work on and hopefully finish this year are the St Nicholas cross stitch,

A Halloween cross stitch piece and an embroidered renaissance ladies piece.  I'd like to finish them all this year but if I finish the quilt and St Nicholas I'll feel really good.  The Halloween piece would be a bonus and the renaissance ladies could become a piece for next year.  That one I would like to delve into stump-work for parts of it.