I have an old quilt with appliqued butterflies on it. No name or date to be found. I purchased the quilt at an antique sale and the sellor had no info about it. The background fabric and backing appears to be rotting away, the batting is all bunched up, and the thread he or she used to blanket stitch the applique is also rotting away. The good news is the the fabric used for the butterflies, while fragile, appears to be in pretty good shape. The fabrics appear to be from the 20's and 30's and there are some that I think are feedsacks. So here's the deal, I want to carefully unsew all the appliques and remake the quilt as close to the original as I can. I think that I do need to stabilize the applique pieces to prevent further damage to them. Any suggestions on what would be a good way to stabilize them? I'm thinking some sort of fusible but I don't want it stiff.
It may sound a little crazy. The quilt as a whole is beyond repair but I really like the fabric used in those little butterflies. The quilt has 4 butterflies arranged on a 9" square with 8 square across and 10 down. The background is white and the backing and binding is a very pale pink. The edges are scalloped in such a way that each scallop has a butterfly.
