This is not meant to upset any of our wonderful Longarmers on this board, but, I have a problem. Took a kingsize quilt to Longarmer last year and asked for all over leaf and vine pattern. No problem she says, gives me the price and says I can have it in three weeks. Great! Well, she calls and tells me to pick up the quilt and says I'm only going to charge $250.00 (a favour). Quilt was in the bag and she was on her way out the door...So I paid her and left. Got home, took out quilt and it's not done. Note inside states - poor fabric, poor construction blah,blah,blah.
Two of mine friends are in total disbelief (one is a longarmer) and we start picking out all the quilting (approx 2/3 had been quilted). Anyway, the problem is this, the quilt is terribly stretched on oneside, I've started quilting it on my Janome 6600, but, you can see it has been stretched. My longarm friend says to finish it, lots of quilting should hide the distortion.
Now that I've written a book here, any other suggestions? I had made this for my daughter and she just loves it. Alot of time, energy and money has gone into this one! HELP!!!

I wish you had a picture to help us see better....and what was the original charge and such?
K

I find her note to be absurd! I know a longarmer, and have asked about distorted tops before (and I'm not saying that yours was before you gave it to her), and she regularly works miracles with customer's tops that don't lay flat or are distorted. I also know that she regularly quilts tops made of horrible quality fabric. I'm sorry you had to deal with this.

I agree, try to square it up as much as possible, and use heavy quilting. I would also stop payment on the $250 if you can.

Do you think if you wash the top it will take shape? Then start over with the quilting. I did this with a small one and it came out fine. Good luck, and I would want my money back.

I agree with mattee. I would stop payment on the check definatly.she did not do as promised and if the top was squared up and not distorted before hand then there shouldn't have been a problem. but that is just me. I am not a longarmer or even a good quilter yet. so this is just my opinion. if the longarmer calls about the check you should just tell her that the quilt was not finished and that you are having to fix what she has done to it. Hope the quilt will get fixed for you. {{{HUGS}}}

Get your money back or get a lawyer!!! No reason for that. She did not do the job she was hired to do. If she didn't think she could before she started she should have called and told you to come pick up your top. To bag it up with a note is chicken sh*& and should not be tolerated.

IMHO as a LA myself, $250 is absurd to begin with for an all-over design! Also, if she saw the top wasn't going to lie flat and felt that she couldn't do it, she should have contacted you to come get it. She should never have started it and then left it partially unfinished. I have - so far - only had to return one top unquilted, and it was very poorly constructed, but the customer knew it and has since taken it apart to redo.

This was very unprofessional on the part of your LA; not only would I stop payment, I would definitely find a new person to quilt my quilts!

Wow, I am speechless. I too would stop payment on the check. I also agree that $250 is ridiculously high for an end to end even if she had finished it. Those types of quilting designs are usually only about 1.5 cents per square inch.

I hope you took pictures of it before you ripped it all out.

I agree that it was her responsibility to inform you prior to starting work if there were ANY issues that would have prevented her from completing the work as agreed. A professional will know with out doing too much inspection if a top has issues.
When I drop my quilts off . The very first thing that is done is to unfold and inspect. Doing this does a few things... opportunity to discuss design of quilting ...and the LA gets to review for any issues in the top prior to doing work.
What happened was unprofessional at a mimimum. I would stop payment if possible. If she truley felt that she could not properly do the work to completion , the responsiblity fell on her to tell you the limits of what she could do PRIOR to starting.