Inside the quilt coat business that's reviving family heirlooms one stitch at a time

Throw Midland transforms forgotten heirloom quilts into cherished coats and keepsakes.

Allison Eyler never intended to start a quilt business. In fact, the Texas-based mom of four says that for more than three decades, she only owned one quilt, despite loving the patterns and colors, because they were beyond her budget.

“My husband bought me my first quilt about 35 years ago when we lived in outside of Houston for Mother's Day, and I hadn’t bought one since he gifted that one to me,” Eyler tells Southern Living, adding that she still brings this quilt with her to retreats and for other types of travel.

But that all changed one night while spending time with her middle daughter, who encouraged her mom to jump headfirst into quilt coats for pop-up shops hosted in the Midland, Texas, area.

“The next thing I knew, I had ordered about 25 quilt coats off of Etsy from different makers,” Eyler explains, adding that it was a quick lesson in quality control. "When you buy online, you're going to get a variety of quality that is all over the place."

However, one maker stood above the rest—Lottie Dal, a seamstress based in Florida. When Eyler sold out her first pop-up, she reached out to Dal to talk about how they could further collaborate, and what Dal said was almost too good to be true.

"She said, 'I am so tired of taking pictures and making posts and dealing with customers online. It would be my pleasure just to sew quilts all day’,” Eyler recalls of that that initial conversation. 

'Bonafide Quilt Lady'

Before long, Throw Midland was born and evolved from pop-ups to shows, including the esteemed Round Top Antiques Fair. Initially, Dal was sourcing and cleaning the quilts herself, but Eyler knew she could put her shopping habit to good use. Soon after Eyler did the pop-up with her daughter, a woman from Dallas reached out wanting to sell a big lot of quilts.

"She had intended to start selling online, but was just too busy with her 'real' job. Somehow, I convinced my husband to go to Dallas and meet this young lady in a random parking lot and and pay her thousands of dollars for 45 quilts that I had never laid eyes on, aside for a few pictures," Eyler says. "Thus, I became a bonafide quilt lady."

Everything Old Is New Again

Eyler says she sources quilts everywhere from Facebook Marketplace and eBay to estate sales and has reaped the rewards of “always shopping,” getting quilts that date back as far as the 1800s. While it can be daunting to track down a quilt's full history, Eyler says she tries to maintain each quilt's story as best she can, including any details she gets from the seller or ones she can dig up online.

"I've got 37,000 photos right now in my phone, so I've got to come up with a better system for keeping those stories with the quilts." Eyler jokes.

After bringing them home, Eyler says all quilts undergo a rigorous cleaning process, which includes a multiple soak method until the water runs clean, and finished with a gentle soak in LeBlanc linen wash from France.

From there, Eyler separates quilts into two categories: re-home or cutters. Along the way, Eyler began discovering quilts that she says were "too beautiful to cut."

"They still had a lot of life in them, so I started reserving those and trying to find homes for them," Eyler explains, adding that Cutters are all shipped to Dal to be made into coats.

Cutters include quilts that have stains that cannot be removed despite rigorous cleaning or missing binding

"Sometimes I'll have really good quilts that nobody buys after several shows, and those, I will go ahead and send to Lottie, because I'm like, this is just not somebody's jam, but I'll hang on to them for two or three years, because you just never know, right? You never know when you're going to find the right person who wants that quilt," Eyler says. "So I have a pretty liberal viewpoint of what is usable."

When Dal receives the quilts, she is given complete creative freedom, so no two coats are ever alike.

“She sends me the quilt and has no opinion about what I do with them,” Dal tells Southern Living, adding she bases each design on what is most aesthetically pleasing based on the quilt’s design. "It kind of depends on what the quilt tells me based on its condition or the pattern."

While some may cringe at the idea of cutting vintage quilts, Dal, who says she is “mostly self taught” when it comes to making coats, says her success is actually because she is not afraid to use scissors.

"I’m always willing to try. I know that if I mess up I can find a way to fix it, but honestly, just having the confidence to go for it means things usually work out in my favor,” Dal says. "Deciding to do it is like 50% of it."

Inspiring The Next Generation

Since starting Throw Midland, Eyler says it has been rewarding to see quilting connect generations.

"Quilting is such a slow process and very satisfying that you can't do it and not feel the historical significance of it and think about the fact that it was a necessity back in the day," Eyler says, adding that she sees more and more young people interested in the craft.

Beyond that, she says the resurgence of quilting has also forced a more critical eye to modern fashion.

"The greatest outcome of it is that people are pushing appreciating any kind of upcycled clothing, and realizing there's a consciousness about our fast fashion and the downfall of that on workers and the environment," Eyler says. "I think everybody is becoming more conscious."

Today, Eyler and Dal agree that their shared goal is to find homes for as many quilts as possible, whether that is as a coat or on a bed.

“Because quilts are so unique, there's a perfect match for every individual," Eyler says. "My mission is to get quilts back in people's homes and to ground this world with a little bit of something that's timeless, treasured, comforting, and beautiful."