Originally Posted by
willferg
And beware of mixing and matching the flannels...I had a friend who made a rag quilt and upon washing it, some blocks shrunk much more than the others, and it was all bunchy. Can you even imagine how that must have felt, after all that work of snipping the seams? I felt for her!
That problem could be fixed with more quilting. When the fabric is quilted sufficiently to the batting, it can shrink only as much as the batting shrinks. If your friend still has the quilt, I would try spray both sides with water to see if it could be blocked back into shape. Then add more quilting to the blocks.
Fabrics shrink radically differently when they are washed on their own. If they are closely quilted to a batting before washing, the layers act as one -- with the batting controlling shrinkage.