mac

Wow, what an interesting thread. I have only had this problem when I use a really loose woven fabric. In the old days, back in the 70's, when it wasn't totally clear what fabric to use for quilting, I did have a problem. Usually I found washing and drying the fabric tightened the weave (more or less). Some tightened more than others and some didn't tighten at all. On my second quilt that I made, I had some problems of seams splitting apart. The fabric had to be really awful, as at that time, I was sewing 5/8" seams. It wasn't until some time later in the 80's that I started using 1/4" seams.

I would definitely contact the manufacture about this problem. If they don't know that a problem has occurred, they can't fix it and they can't compensate you, either. There may be others in the same boat with this fabric problem for that run of fabric.

peaceandjoy

The worst fraying I have experienced was with licensed fabric (Eric Carle's Brown Bear and Hungry Caterpillar). It is terribly frustrating.

I have found that careful cutting - squaring up the fabric so that there are not off grain threads to loosen - combined with starch helps a lot when handling fabric. The starch piece isn't going to help once a fabric is washed, though. So if it's in the seam allowance and fraying, once that quilt is washed, the starch won't be there to keep it in place.

Since you've already quilted it and can't add "second" seam, could you add quilting just to the side of the seams to hold it in place? I don't know what else to suggest to correct the problem you are having in this piece.

Regardless of what, if anything, you do to try to fix the problem in this quilt, I would contact the manufacturer to let them know. Send them pictures of a piece of the fabric, if you have a scrap, showing the fraying that you had to trim up as well as a picture of the threads that are migrating in the finished quilt.

Barb in Louisiana

It was a secondary fabric and matched perfectly. The smart thing I do now is look for those loosely woven fabrics and don't let them come home with me. I am a lover of batiks. They are very tightly woven and almost never fray. Most other cottons I have fray to a certain degree and I just deal with it by handling the fabric as little as possible and using the 2.0 seam stitch. I do not pre wash. I did that one time on one piece of fabric and I lost so much fabric due to raveling and like to have never gotten the wrinkles out of the fabric. Never again.

Edited to add: If I see too much raveling I will backstitch every seam so that it doesn't shred on the edges.