Originally Posted by Scissor Queen
Originally Posted by bearisgray
Just wondering -
Do any of you non-washers measure your finished item before and after washing it a couple of times?
If you haven't, how can you KNOW for sure whether it changed shape or not?
I'm not that obsessive. It's whatever size it is. The bed can still wear the quilt even if it shrinks a couple of inches. Lap quilts and baby quilts will fit all laps and all babies even if they shrink some.
I agree that one of the biggest bonuses of quilt-making is that most items have some leeway in what is an acceptable finished size.
There also seems to be quite a bit of leeway in what is considered acceptable "change" in a washed item that would not be acceptable in a purchased garment.
That wasn't the point or intent of the question -
When someone says "it doesn't matter to me" - that is one thing -
I worked with engineers for a while - and the tolerances in their work was relatively crude (plus or minus 0.005 inch) and I absorbed some of their way of thinking. I also learned that "offness" could be cumulative.
I realize that quiltmaking will always be an "approximate" process - the question is how much "approximateness" is tolerable to each maker.