aeble

I've used a drop of liquid stitch on the ends I found were coming out. If you apply it very carefully, it works well.

Prism99

This is a top-loading washer? To safely wash a large quilt in a top-loader, it's important to not allow any machine agitation of the quilt. You want to stop the machine and hand agitate by pushing down on the quilt. When finished with that, advance the machine to the spin cycle.

I agree with BellaBoo. There is no reason to avoid the spin cycle in the washing machine; it is the agitation cycle that can do some damage. What can do even more damage is hanging a wet quilt on the line. This is because water is *heavy*. A soaking wet quilt will weigh a lot more than a dry quilt. Hanging a wet quilt puts excessive stress on all the quilting lines. This is probably what caused your knotted ends to come out.

Front loaders can be allowed to go full cycle although for large quilts I always use the large front-loader at the laundromat. Domestic front-loaders don't use enough water to dilute possible dye bleeds, so the laundromat front-loaders are safer for first washings.

busy fingers

Thank you for you input.

The washing machine does not have an agitator in the middle so there is no swishing back and forth of the quilt getting wrapped around it. It has a round disc which is flush with the bottom of the machine. This moves back and forth. The spinner is not what I call gentle so that is why I pulled it out, gently squeezed as much water as possible from it and then put it over the line and hosed it down. I know that there would have been excess weight with the water but I did not want the machine to crinkle it up in the spinner.

I am slowly working my way around it re-stitching the ends and this time I have left extra long tails, pulled them through to the back tied them off with a double knot then buried them back in the wadding, brought them up again to tie them off again twice.

Hopefully this will stop anything happening in the future.

BellaBoo

My machine is a newer toploader. It swishes back and forth, no agitating. It uses very little water. It has a gentle, delicate, and an extra handwash cycle. I don't know why all three but I love the handwash cycle for quilts and all my clothes. That setting spin cycle is very gentle. There is a cycle for about every type of load of laundry. Even a sheet and towel cycle. Before I got the new washer I washed my quilts with a regular wash and spin cycle. I never noticed the spin cycle causing any problem.