Repairing Crochet - Carol's Bedspread

Here is a beautiful heirloom bedspread made by Daisy B___ (1884-1966), pictured below.
Daisy (pictured above) passed the heirloom bedspread to her daughter, Margaret (1907-1974), (pictured at left) who had married and had a son, Richard G. A____, to whom she then passed it on. Richard married Carol J. H___ . Carol is a friend of my sister-in-law, Patty, and she described a calamity involving her Laborador retriever named Boomer (Hunters Marsh High Flying Thunder is his real name), pictured to the right. It seems that Boomer got into the guest bedroom and gnawed a couple of holes in the family heirloom!  Carol hoped to be able to repair the damage...




Carol asked Patty for help and Patty conferred with me, to decide what to do. Patty and Carol live in Michigan and I live in Pennsylvania, so we did this via email! Here's a closeup of one of the holes and a closeup of the pattern as it should look.
From the photo, I was able to discern the repeating motif. Look carefully-- the center of each 6-petaled flower is the center of the motif and the edge of the motif extends midway along the length of each petal. Here's my analysis I sent to Patty and Carol:

"At first glance this looks possible. The bedspread appears to be made up of motifs that are made separately and sewn together (I think I see there's overcasting where each motif meets the next). Here are the options if they are "sewn together" as it appears:

1) Simplest. Remove** a motif from each corner of the bedspread and use these as replacements for the affected motifs. This only works if it's acceptable to Carol to change the shape of the corners and if no more than 4 motifs have been affected. If you need more motifs think about other modifications to the border that might be acceptable (remove 3 motifs from each corner or remove a whole row of motifs). The torn motifs need to be **removed and replaced with the good ones.

2) Doable: Make up new motifs as replacements. The replacements need to match. The damaged ones need to be carefully **removed. This requires matching the thread and the size of the motifs and, of course, the motif pattern. I can figure out the pattern. Matching the thread can be hard if the piece is old and the yarn has yellowed. I have a great recipe for brightening old linens that is very gentle (it hasn't gobbled up anything yet, but I don't know if it will weaken the yarn or not, since things I have treated have not yet stood the test of time; I found the recipe on the web and it was recommended for treating antique linens, but you know what they say about what you find on the web!). This might make the yarn matching possible; most bedspreads were made from "bedspread cotton" which, I believe, is size 10 cotton and is readily available in stores today. When trying to match the thread, realize that cottons that have been washed fluff a little so a new thread might look firmer than the old, but after washing a few times will soften to match. Matching the motif size is doable, just recognize that it make take a few tries with different hook sizes and varying one's tension. It's important to note that cotton cannot be blocked (wet and stretched to size and dried) to match like wool can, so you really do need to match the size (make it up and wash it in hot water and let it dry, then measure). Since it is open and lacy, there's a little room for "forgiveness".

3) Doable: Rebuild the torn motifs. **Remove them, unravel back to the torn spot and crochet them over again. This will require some extra yarn (hence the yarn-matching issue is still there) to make up for the fact that any broken pieces of yarn will need to be discarded if too short, or will need to be joined in the usual way you do with crochet when you need to join a new ball of yarn... this requires tails that will need to be woven in and these tails use up some yarn. This also requires the pattern for the motifs, which I can do.

4) Hard: Try to repair just the torn parts. You still need to find the matching yarn, as above. This involves figuring out the pattern for the motif (which I can do) and then carefully figuring out what has been destroyed and working in the missing parts. Crochet is not easy to repair in this fashion (but knitting is) because of the way crochet is constructed... everything is built from one long series of interlocking chain stitches. Building up from the bottom is easy, it's just that thing on top of what you are building needs to be backwards-built from underneath, which will require darning and the ability to picture in one's mind what the final crochet will look like and how the thread would travel had it been built from the bottom up. I've done that for only a couple of small things. It's hard to give general instructions on how to do this... it requires an experience crocheter who can "read" the stitches and form good mental pictures. I have a couple of things in my work-basket that I want to try this on before I'd raise my hand to say "I can do it" for Carol.

If it's not sewn together, but rather is crocheted together, it depends how that was done, but let's cross that bridge when we come to it. ...

**Remove motifs: Do not cut away... use a tapestry needle or the blunt end of a sewing needle to carefully pick out the stitches, one by one. When the tail gets too long, snip it and keep picking, unless you wish to reuse the tail, in which case, don't snip it."

Patty examined the work and confirmed, indeed, that the bedspread is made up of motifs that were sewn together.

I developed the motif crochet pattern, below. The illustration shows the motif I worked from the pattern, using number 5 pearl cotton, size 6 (1.6mm) steel crochet hook; the sample motif measures 2 7/8 “ across from top of tr’s to top of tr’s on opposite side (unwashed, unblocked).

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Motif pattern:

The work is done all from the same side, i.e. do not turn work.
1 picot = ch 3, sl st in 3rd ch from hook

R1: Ch 6, join into ring with sl st

R2: Ch 2, work 11 sc’s in ring, join with sl st to top of ch-2 at beginning of round (pause now and count to make sure you have 12 stitches around ring, ready for the next round).

R3: Ch 4 (this acts as 1 tr), *ch 3, 1 picot, ch 3, skip 1 sc, 4 tr in next sc, repeat from * 4 more times; ch 3, 1 picot, ch 3, skip 1 sc, 3 tr in next sc, join with a sl st to top of ch-4 at beginning of round – 6 clusters have now been made around ring, each cluster having 4 tr’s.

R4: Ch 4 (this acts as 1 tr), * ch 7, 1 tr in each of the next 2 tr’s, 2 tr’s in the next tr, 1 tr in the next tr, repeat from * 4 more times; ch 7, 1 tr in each of the next 2 tr’s, 2 tr’s in the next tr, join with a sl st to top of ch-4 at beginning of round – 6 clusters have been made around ring, each cluster having 5 tr’s.

R5: Ch 4 (this acts as 1 tr), * ch 4, in the middle ch of the ch-7 loop work (1sc, ch 3, 1 sc), ch 4, 1 tr in each of the next 2 tr’s, 2 tr’s in the next tr, 1 tr in each of the next 2 tr’s, repeat from * 4 more times; ch 4, in the middle ch of the ch-7 loop work (1sc, ch 3, 1 sc), ch 4, 1 tr in each of the next 2 tr’s, 2 tr’s in the next tr, 1 tr the next tr, join with a sl st to top of ch-4 at beginning of round, cut thread with an 18” long tail and draw tail through last chain on hook; this tail will be used to sew this motif to the next one when sewing up—6 clusters have now been made around ring, each cluster having 6 tr’s.
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I sent the pattern to Patty and she worked up a couple of samples to test the pattern and her gauge. She discussed with Carol how she wanted to proceed. They decided on Option 2, above. Carol had picked up some softer crochet cotton awhile back when she thought she'd try to do the repair herself and this is what Patty used for the repair. Patty examined the damage and determined the bedspread would need 7-8 new motifs. She also used some tea on her samples to yellow them a bit to see if the thread would match better, and it did.

Success!

Patty completed the replacement motifs and used them to replace the torn ones. Here's how the repaired bedspread looks now:















What a nice job Patty did!






Patty presented it to Carol (pictured holding the bedspread) at an unrelated committee meeting. Carol looks very happy!










Here are some more pictures after Carol took it home and washed it. She used a 24-hour soak in OxyClean and rinsed it very well. She decided not to use the tea-dye to give it an antique look. (Disregard the black spot you see -- it's not a hole, it's just a tag on a towel underneath the bedspread.)





















































To make your own tablecloth/bedspread like this one:

Choose thread that you'd like to use-- perhaps white or ecru #5 pearl cotton or #10 bedspread cotton. Use a #6 steel (1.6mm) crochet hook, or a size of your own choosing. Make up one or more test motifs following the motif pattern above. Measure the diameters of the motifs from the top of tr’s on one side to the top of tr’s on the opposite side. Wash in hot water, blot in a towel and let dry on a smooth countertop so the motifs find their natural size. Measure again to see how much to allow for shrinkage. Average the measurements for a few sample motifs. Figure the dimensions of the desired bedspread and divide by this measurement to calculate number of motifs in each direction. Multiply these numbers to compute the total number of motifs required to make the full bedspread. This is only approximate since the motifs are not square, but rather hexagonal. Once you've made up several motifs, you can sew them together (see below) and measure the made-up dimensions and calculate more accurately how many you will need; be sure to allow for shrinkage.

When all the motifs are made, sew together at tops of treble-crochet clusters at corresponding points, using the existing yarn tails and a neat overcast stitch. They fit together as hexagons in a honeycomb fashion. Weave ends in. Wash by hand; rinse well, blot with towels or spin in top-loading washer on spin cycle (don't use any agitation). Dry flat.