A quilt from Grandma

This is a quilt made for me by my Grandmother on the Ouradnik side. She sewed 6" squares of fabric from old clothes and then put a wool batt in, tied it with yarn and folded the edges down and sewed them together.

When I washed it for the first and only time the wool clumped up. She had not added a scrim to it. Now decades later this fabric, that was already someones worn out clothing and old when she sewed it, was starting to shred and disintigrate. That is the first picture.

The second picture is after I have spent over 30 hours repairing just the top. And I'm not done yet!

I have:

1. taken out every shredded square,
2. repaired 1/2 the seams,
3. mended many blocks,
4. found more of her old fabric that she had cut into squares, and used them to replace the squares I removed. I didn't actually have enough 6" so I took apart some 9-patch blocks she made and used 4 of the squares together and cut them down to 6".
5. used about 16 yards of sheerweight fusible interfacing to apply on the back of each and every square!
6. re-enforced every seam, every single one!

Since she tied the quilt with thick poly yarn, there are two 1/8th" holes in each block. Since I have quite a bit of fabric squares that she cut years before she died, I have used the fusible interfacing on them and cut them into circles about 1.5" in diam and have turned the edges and I'm sewing those over the holes. There will be a few bigger circles covering any tears in the fabric. When I'm done with that I will attack the backing fabric. Which she bought new, but also has 1/8th" holes all over where the yarn came through. I think I will continue with the circle thing on the back too...