Parasol Lady, Umbrella Sue, Southern Belle?

I received a gift from my mother-in-law which contained her attempt at quilting.   She made this for her daughter (now almost 60) and she was old enough to choose the sashing color.   1960 would be a good estimate for the year.   I've searched a little online and I can't find this exact lady with ringlets and a bow coming off the umbrella.   Also a very wide skirt.

 

 

I love pink!   I wish the sashings were pink instead of yellow.   She made 2 tops, one is mostly quilted, the other has the main body of the quilt made.  Both are designed for twin size beds.   I've tried to decide what would the best alternative for completing these quilt tops but for now, unless I get some good ideas from YOU, I will complete both of these as twin size bed quilts.

 

This one is the top w/o borders added:

 

 

 

I believe both tops have identical ladies in the same layout.   Included in her package is about 2 yards of the yellow fabric plus about a 4 yard strip at about 15" wide (appears all the sashings were torn from the yardage which was common at that time).   Only scraps of the "domestic" as my mother called the muslin type fabric and about 2 yards of a flannel blanket looking batting with a serged edge!  Also several packs of yellow bias binding for finishing her quilts.   I don't know how much progress was completed for the daughter before she put it away.  Then about 20 years later she worked on these again for her twin granddaughters...and now they are in my possession to see what I can do with them.

 

The other piece has been hand quilted over the body of the quilt.   The bottom border appears to have been removed, sashings and borders have not been quilted and there are issues with the top and bottom as you will see in the photos.   Kricket the quilt inspector had to check out my favorite pink lady and pose for the photo!

 

 

 

The bottom.  You can see that a border had been added, the yellow is darker where the hem had been but for some reason it was removed. 

 

 

 

 

The batting is not long enough for the project either but I can fix that.   There is a bit of the original batting (flannel) that was used in the project.  Hopefully I can make it work for the one quilt.

 

 

 

 

This is a big problem but I think I can repair it.   As you can see, the backing AND the batting is smaller than the quilt top.

 

 

 

 

This is the top folded back, can you see the ragged edge that is the backing?  It drops down into the quilted area.  Also see the finished edge on that flannel used as batting?  That has to come out of there.   Do you think I should applique a section on this area, then cut a straight line to add on the additional backing fabric needed?  I really don't want to get into unstitching any of the hand quilted areas (all the blocks are quilted as well as the ladies) and that seems to me to be the best approach to correcting this problem.

 

 

 

 

 

I think I can correct the top and bottom areas, maybe I'll remove the borders and go with new fabric so I can get a border on all 4 sides.  Maybe I have enough from the scraps to get one done and mend the tears in the one side...   I'll just need to come up with a quilting plan for the borders and sashings.   The other one will be all machine quilted.

 

 

Rips in the side border.

 

Color bleeding to the backside, dark stain in upper right corner.

 

Lots of staining, color bleeds and light spots on the back side of the mostly quilted one.

 

 

 

I would love to hear from you about any ideas you have for completing these tops.  Should I keep these as 2 twin quilts?   Break them down to something smaller for all the grandkids?  I've thought and thought about this and just not sure.   I'm inclined to think leaving them as twin bed size would be the best thing to do.   Difficult to say give one to each of the twins too because one has hand quilting from Grandma, the other will not....   Decisions, Decisions.    If you have any ideas to share I would love to hear them!