Bigger

My son loves his quilt. He showed it off to all his friends at college. After a couple of years, he moved to an off-campus apartment, and got himself a double bed. While the quilt was long enough, it certainly wasn't wide enough. It covered the top of the mattress, but fell over each side by only a couple of inches.

I was having a conversation with my sister and said, "I'm going to have to make him another quilt. The blue one isn't big enough."

"Don't you have some leftover pieces," she asked. Actually, I did.

"Well, why don't you just make it bigger?"

To make it bigger, first we had to take it apart. Much easier if a quilt is tied. So between terms, I asked my son to bring the quilt home. I set him down with the seam ripper. He cut out all the ties, and painstakingly removed the quilt from its backing. Here you can see him at work, with my pile of "leftover pieces" on the table nearby.
I sewed those leftover bits into a strip 16" wide, and added it to one side of the quilt. You can see it in the photo below. It is the slightly darker area on the right side.

The quilt's backing was a sheet, and I had to make that bigger, too. I found a really neat coordinating fabric, and added about 20" to the middle of the backing. Then we tied it every 4 - 6", I folded up the backing to the front, pinned it, and sewed it up, with our cat Gizzy supervising.

Gizzy always had to be in the middle of everything.
I think it might have been easier to make a new quilt "from scratch." I asked my son, and he said, "NO WAY! I didn't want a new quilt."

My son was thrilled with his "bigger" quilt, and took it back to college with him. That was five years ago. Gizzy has gone to the Rainbow Bridge, and my son still has his quilt on his (double) bed.

And he still shows it off to all his friends.