I guess I have to learn everything the hard way - but can it be fixed?
I'm working on a quilt top which features a 22"x40"middle panel, surrounded by six pieced borders. I noticed during this journey that, as I attached one border after the other, my center panel seemed a little not flat anymore. It wasn't too bad at first, but by the time the next-to-last border was attached, the center panel was noticeably less flat - not wrinkled, but less taut. So I ironed it. With steam. Then I tried to smooth it out some more by hand. Then it occurred to me that everything I was doing to try to fix it was making it worse.
I would appreciate any ideas as to how I could handle this and make the panel taut. Starch it and use a dry iron on it? I am at a loss.
I took some photos, but they don't show the problem very well. You can sort of see it at the top corners of the panel. It really isn't that bad - but is this going to be a problem for my long arm quilter?
PS: I know I have some wavy borders, which is really disappointing. Again, not too bad a problem, but for the first time ever I didn't just sew a long piece on and trim off the overage, but rather I measured, pinned six ways from Sunday, and took care not to stretch the borders when I sewed them on. And they're wavy.
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