To make it easier to work with next time, I recommend prewashing and drying flannel *twice*, then heavily starching it before you cut. Starch stabilizes flannel and keeps the edges from stretching out of shape as you sew pieces together. To starch, I mix a 1:1 solution of Sta-Flo liquid laundry starch and water, lay the fabric on my kitchen island and "paint" the strach on using a large wall painting brush, throw the saturated fabric in the dryer, then iron with steam.

If you do all this, you won't have to wash your unbound quilt before applying binding, plus the pieces will be much easier to sew together accurately. Washing the quilt after it is bound removes all the starch.

For those of us who are Celiacs, you don't want to use commercial spray starches. Instead, cook up a bunch of rice, but make sure there is a TON of water. You don't need to really cook the rice all the way. What you want is for the rice to release the starch into the water. Usually I just cook it until the water turns milky colored. Strain out the rice and once the rice water cools, poor it into a large tub. Then you simply soak your large pieces of fabric in them and hang them to dry. It's a bit of a pain in the neck but it works. You can also pour this into a spray bottle to spritz your fabrics with as you are working with them.

I had no idea that starch would bother someone that has celiac disease.
Thanks for the info.

It's one of those things we normally don't think about but I sure get sick when I use it, which is sad because I LOVE spray starch!!!!! I still have a bottle and will use it in classes or whatnot, but when it runs out I'm not buying any more. The only problem sometimes with the spritzer bottle is that the rice starch can clog it up. :roll: I haven't discovered a solution for that yet. If anyone else has any ideas to help I would certainly love to hear them.

I didn't think of that. Shoot! Guess I'll have to bind it as originally planned. Just was trying to think of different textures to use. Flannel binding will save the separate washing I guess. Thanks for pointing this out!

I will DEFINITELY wash my flannel next time! I did use spray starch and it didn't seem to do much good. Guess I'll try the painting like you suggest next time. Thanks! I've gotten so many great ideas from one question! :)

I have made numerous baby quilts with flanellette. I always wash first. I also use satin ribbon to bind them, because as armaynes noted, babies like the different textures. I have not had to, (yet), re-bind one, but since the ribbon doesn't involve any hand sewing, I wouldn't hesitate to rebind if needed. I think it would take a lot of washings before it would get to that point.
Patti

There are no stupid questions here, just questions to learn from. We have all been beginners at some point in time.