Originally Posted by
Jackie Spencer
Hope you are able to fix your quilt. How does this happen? I am obviously not a LAQ. It has happened to me several times also. Always measure my quilt before adding borders, everything is squared up, send off to be LA and get it back and Im thinking ...... is this the same quilt? This was not done by anyone on this board, and not always the same LAQ. Is there something I can do to prevent this? I have even tried sewing a 1/4 in. around the outside edge of my quilt before sending it off, hoping this would keep it from stretching.
when your quilt is taken to the long arm quilter she/he loads it onto a frame- the backing is attached to leaders then rolled onto a horizontal bar, the top is attached to different leaders and rolled onto another bar- the backing is then pulled across the quilting area and attached to a new leader/bar- the batting is placed *floated* across the backing- the top is pulled across the whole thing and attached (with pins, a line of stitching...) the sides are held with clamps to keep the edges from being *floppy* ... the whole 'sandwich' is held fairly firmly- to keep wrinkles/creases from happening on the backing (or top) this is why if you have a lot of seams around the edges of your quilt top they can come apart if you did not run a line of stitching all the way around the outer edge of your quilt (locking stitches to keep everything together) this is also why sometimes the quilt comes off the frame a bit *skewed* -- the process of turning the bars, advancing the quilt- tightening, smoothing, continuing on with the quilting (which in itself draws up the fabrics a bit-which is why it is necessary to have extra backing/batting) and why it is best to plan to square up your quilt after quilting/before binding.