Giving new life to a worn, thrifted quilt

I bought this factory made quilt at the thrift store for $3. The fabric is thin, stitches are pulling out and some of the applique shapes are fraying.

I picked it up a the thrift shop to have for a family camping weekend, to throw on the ground for babies. In my spring decluttering challenge, I decided it was time to drop this off at the thrift shop for someone else. But, I had an idea that I could put it on my longarm quilting machine, a Gammill Statler, and run tight rows of machine quilting to stabilize it and make another floor pouffe. I was about to do that, and found myself pulled in more interesting directions.
So, back in the thrift box, except maybe not. I asked my niece, with 2 littles and one on the way, if she’d like this quilt. I felt like I should patch some of the appliqued shapes first.

Using the longarm quilting machine, I stitched over a flower and trimmed the excess. It was fun, but I wasn’t interested in doing all the flowers on the quilt, for a couple of reasons.
First off, Stitching brand new, quilt shop quality cotton to a thin, already worn quilt, would only hasten how quickly the rest of the quilt would wear. Secondly, as often happens when I upcycle something for fun, I had inspiration for multiple other projects to start or finish.

Instead of covering the old flowers, I trimmed out the worst of the frayed fabric, leaving enough of the shape to look like an intentionally frayed flower. And, I set my machine to quilt a very close, repeating pattern over the entire quilt. This is not heirloom quality fabric, so I didn’t take special pains at the edges to get the quilting to stop at a specific place. I just created boundaries as close to the scalloped edge as I could, and filled in with lines and bubbles.

Now, it got to be late at night, and I didn’t have to worry about setting the origin on my machine or anything, since I was treating each roll of the quilt as it’s own piece. I shut off my machine, and planned to just continue the lines and bubbles next time I was in my studio.
But, I realized I could use the rest of this very large quilt, to practice other patterns, threads and techniques…and clean off a bunch of bobbins.

Your friend,
Anne Dovel