MANY years ago my grandmother made me what she called a "car quilt", what we now call a lap quilt. She used an inexpensive (even for that time) muslin for the back and folded it to the front for the binding. I have put a collection of patches on the back, mostly from Girl Scouts when the girls were in scouting. Over the past 50 years the muslin has become very brittle and split in places, so I have removed the patches and plan to "re-quilt" it. The top is a simple brick pattern of double knit, the batting is a thin polyester, and the quilting is hand stitching on each side of the seams (big stitches). But the binding is machine stitched down with TINY little stitches.

My options are to completely take it apart and start over, remove all the quilting and backing except the "binding", or leave the backing on and treat the whole thing as a top then remove the old quilting.

It is considerably longer than it is wide and I thought about making it square and turning it into a wall hanging. Most of the splits are on one end, so that part would be cut off.

Hope this makes sense. All advise is welcomed.