Work in Progress Wednesday

I'm working a quilt this week - not my own, but one that I'm trying to repair.  One of our guild members brought it to the silent auction, hoping someone would take it off her hands.  There's a lot of time and effort in this quilt, but it was fraught with disappointment for her (a story that's not mine to share) and one of the final straws was the quilting job that was done on it . As she put it, "it was quilted by a drunken sailor".  Looking closely at this picture, you can seem some of the stitching marks.  It was supposed to be a baptist fan, but there were fans with straight edges, "backtracking" that missed by almost 1/4", and unequal sized fans.

She had completely unpicked all the quilting, and then disassembled most of the blocks because several holes were introduced in the unpicking process.  I pulled it out this week, started looking for good pieces, and put together what blocks I could.  I came up with 16 full blocks (rather than 20). Still a good sized quilt.

Then I gave it a gentle bath. The quilter had a rather heavy hand with the blue marker and I didn't want to press all the seams until I made sure the blue was gone, since heat can set that.  The end result has been hanging over a railing to dry overnight.

Looks pretty good, except this one block :(  Anyone know how to get out blue that water won't touch?

I see the original owner used a couple of different greys in the quilt. I wonder if she intended a pattern with those fabrics. I seem to have a bit of randomness, and I think I'll leave it that way (partly because I don't think I have an equal number of each background colour).

Next step - create a backing and quilt this with a baptist fan pattern. One that hasn't been done by a drunken sailor :)

I'm linking up on Freshly Pieced and Needle and Thread Network today.