Originally Posted by leatheflea
The MIL made this top 30+ years ago and never made another quilt related item. She has asked me to quilt it for the last 3 years. So finally DH brought it home. I never notice how the top really looked till I started looking at it and sizing it up for the Longarm frame. I cant put this on the frame. So I decided to hand quilt it, she's in no hurry. But for the life of me I dont know how I'm gonna quilt this and hide the wonky, puckers and waves. Any suggestions and help would greatly appreciated.
Iron it carefully, concentrating on the flat areas.
Thread baste it closely (see Sharon Schamber's method) and isolate the distorted areas. This allows the distorted areas to be held in a "frame" of stable basted fabric.
Then get out the spray starch. Pick one of the almost flat areas, saturate with starch and let it soak in (1-5 minutes). Hold your hot iron about a half inch above the surface of the quilt and let the heat of the iron encourage the fabric to shrink.
As each area becomes as flat as possible, thread baste it into place, distributing any remaining distortion evenly throughout the area of the distortion. Baste closely, an inch by inch grid is not too close.
The good news is that cotton can be relied upon to ease by 10%. That's a quarter inch over an area 2.5 inches wide, which is a lot of easing!