Beautiful Quilt. Sorry to hear you had this problem. I prewash my fabric and always use Warm & White for batting. Never noticed that much shrinkage.

Wow!! That's a lot of shrinkage. But the quilt is absolutely beautiful and even though it's a little smaller than you want, can't you just imagine the little one dragging it around and sucking on a corner! (Linus-like.)

From what I read, there's a lot of difference of opinion on pre-wash. But what I decided is the following:
- Fabric for anything that will be used by a child or donated to a hospital, or for linens (pillowcases, etc.) will be pre-washed in hot water and dried in a normal dryer cycle.
- Fabric for things I will keep or will give to an adult will be pre-washed in warm watter and dried in a normal dry cycle. (Mostly because we have cats and things need washing.)
- Fabric for a wall hanging doesn't need to be pre-washed.

Just my thoughts.

I don't wash my quilts after quilting unless they are for myself....... However, I do love your quilt!

Look at all those crinkles! I think its perfect! great for cuddlin' ~

I appreciate everyone's thoughts and experiences on this. Thank you!

Another thought - was it 31" before you did the quilting or after? The quilting will also make a quilt shrink. I just did one that started at 51x66 and ended at 49x64.

:XD: Sorry about the srinking. I noticed that you have what looks writting on some of the blocks. Are you able to read the words? I think that the quilt looks great. Did you say what the size of the whole quilt is now? If you did sorry, but I think who ever gets it will love it. It's really pretty.

That's what I was thinking.

I never pre-wash, and I never put my quilts in the dryer. Mine don't shrink. I feel that putting them in the dryer causes undue wear, shortening the life of a quilt. The heat of the dryer weakens the threads of the fabric so that it wears faster. With the work that is put into a quilt I don't want them to wear out any faster that normal love would cause.

I have! It was a solid royal blue Country Classics that I bought at JoAnns. Started at 45" wide... and after washing, it was 41" wide.


:-(

Also... Monk's cloth shrinks a LOT too. Not that you'd ever use it for a quilt, of course... but if you were going to use it for a throw of a certain size, that could be a problem.