Old Fashioned Quilt Renovation

This is a picture of my Grandmother; Alice. She died when I was four so I don't have many memories of her but the two distinct memories I can recall still invoke happiness in me. My first memory is bouncing on a mini trampoline in her living room as she sang: "Goldilocks, goldilocks..." my crazy blonde curly hair flying all over the place as she sang. The second is running through the grass in her front yard while she watched, smiling, from an old fashioned lawn chair. She was a kind, peaceful, hard working, woman. Someone that made everything from scratch. Someone I hope to emulate in many ways.

Recently I inherited a small corner of an old tattered quilt that she made most likely during the 1930's. I fell in love with the cheerful fabrics and carefully pieced design. Her tiny quilting stitches, barely noticeable, speak of a bygone era. This is one of those rare gems, my own little old fashioned piece of history. I wanted to display it somehow but was a little unsure what to do with it since so many of the pieces were terribly damaged. It felt wrong to throw it out, or hide it in a box somewhere, so I got creative. Here are a couple of before pictures. If you look carefully, you can see where it was torn:

And this is what I came up with after:

This was such a fun project and it also tied me closer to my Grandma Alice. I felt a few stitches of our souls meld together as I stitched away next to my lamp right before bed. I'm excited to have such a cheerful, tangible reminder of her creative craft and all that she stood for displayed in my home.