Grandmas

 Around the holidays the Kidlet was home from college.  Somehow we were on the topic of a quilt I'd made for him when he was very young.  I believe it was a double irish chain of two colors.  A cream and navy with a blood red binding and back.  It was hand quilted.  Took forever it seemed.  He mentioned that the binding was starting to fall apart from wear.  I thought I had some extra fabric so I said I would repair it if he could find a way to bring it home.

So I set the Sweetie on a mission to find "the fabric".  He rooted around in the basement and attic and came up with a box with fabric.  While the box didn't have what I was looking for it had some other things.  A double wedding ring top hand pieced by my Great Grandma and some dresses that had belonged to 'Big Grandma'.

I came to have the quilt top and dresses following a visit to Wisconsin to visit the folks several years ago.  The quilt top had been pieced by great grandma toward the end of her life.  It was made of scraps and a thick muslin.  The plan was to make needed repairs and hand quilt and bind to finish.  But then I got stuck...

She was getting old and her sight was not great so some of the piecing isn't as carefully handled as when she was younger.  There are puckers and a number of the pieces don't lay flat.  In some cases the fabrics, which may have been clothes, had started to fall apart. 

The dresses were made by "Big Grandma", my maternal grandmother.  They were generally of the same vintage as the quilt top.  Grandma was called "Big Grandma", well, because she was big.  She came from a German family and quite a number of them were tall and solidly built.  Back in the day there weren't plus sizes readily available for women therefore all of her clothes were made by hand from hand drawn patterns.

Even the button holes were stitched by hand.  This dress matches the fabric of one of the quilt squares in the photos above.

I was given 4 dresses to use to repair the worn fabric on Great Grandma's quilt.  This lavender dress was also hand pieced.

The next two are a little newer as they were stiched by machine.  The buttonholes were still made by hand.

On the hanger on the back of the bathroom door these don't look like much.  Washed and pressed, but stored in a box for a long time.  But they weren't shapeless on Big Grandma.  We lived with her and Grandpa for some time when I was growing up, so my sister, and brothers saw her in these dresses or some very similar nearly everyday. For me, these still have a suprising amount of meaning.  She passed away when I was 14.

Now you know why I'm stuck. And have been for a long, long, time.  Should I cut up the "Big Grandma" dresses to make repairs to Great Grandma's quilt top, keeping the fabric all of the same era?  Or should I purchase reproduction fabric to make the needed repairs?  I would love your comments offering suggestions.