Originally Posted by
Barbpr
Although she did the 'right' thing by saying she would redo the quilt, I would be hesitant to return it to her. She should have noticed the quality of her work. Since she didn't, it would seem to me that she either doesn't know good quilting or doesn't care. I wouldn't trust her with your wonderful quilt again.
To the longarmers that suggested letting her know... I agree. I have had problems with two professional quilters. The first one completely ignored my instructions for my completely handpieced first traditional bed quilt. She wrote all the notes down and then obviously didn't read them. I cried when I saw the artsy fartsy quilting on churn dash, bow ties, etc quilt. She didn't apologize and charged me a fortune. It sits in the closet since. The other did a fabulous job and attached the binding for me to hand sew. I had a hard time because the bidning was on a bit crooked. Called her and she ripped it off, replaced it and sewed down the binding by hand. She has had my business since.
Thank you for your quilt and for your concern about it being the best it can be.
I know nothing about how long arm quilters work, but is it possible they are subbing these jobs out? As in paying other LA quilters, maybe with less experience, to quilt jobs they've contracted to do? Without telling their customers? I'd assume that's highly unethical, but it might explain why a long armer with 10 years experience turned out a bad product without, apparently, knowing it. Also, the quilter who took notes, appeared to understand the instructions, and yet did something completely different - that sounds like a communication problem to me, not between the customer and the quilter but maybe between the quilter and another quilter.
Absolutely no offense is meant by these questions. I certainly don't think anyone here would do this, and maybe no one does it, ever. Just speculating.