Save Your Family History ... Save the Art

My cousin in California contacted me to see if I could help her.  She came across a number of doilies made by her grandmother (my aunt --- my mother and her grandmother were sisters) and asked if there was any way I could save them.

I had never done doily repair before but being a history person, preserving these pieces of family art and heirlooms became a do-or-die challenge.  I accepted.

Some of the threads were so aged, they were started to disintegrate.  Just stretching the doilies out with my hands would cause them to break.

I began by unraveling threads for a couple of reasons.  I needed a clean start and stop spot to add the new thread, and I needed a thread long enough to weave in so it wouldn't unravel anymore.

The repair itself was just a matter of "eyeballing" the pattern to figure out the stitches, then adding the new thread just like we would do when doing a color change.

On some of the doilies, you can definitely see the color difference.  This is because of new thread being combined into old, aged, and faded threads.  But as I explain to people, when anthropologists find a skull with pieces missing, they intentionally use a different colored clay or rebuilding compound to fill in the spaces, so they can tell which is the original bone and which is the repair.  So I told my cousin (and all future clients who came to be with repairs) "Your item is now anthropologically correct!"

When I finally finished these, I really felt great!  Not because of the newly discovered skill I didn't know I had (which WAS pretty cool!) but because I had managed to save some family heirlooms.  These 50+ year old pieces of hand made art will live on in our family for future generations to love and admire.

Here are the before and after photos.  I hope you like them.