It's fine and very acceptable for quilts that are meant to be used and loved.

for me, i don't think it looks that bad. but washing and blocking the quilt may help

As auntpiggplpn said---- not enough quilting in the blank area caused the puffiness....not locking in the batting and controlling the batt shrinkage......I presume you had prewashed fabric...thus only the batting shrunk...if it was all unwashed it would have shrunken a bit more evenly......it's a baby quilt......it will be loved......

I think it looks fine and has a wonderful, soft, vintage appeal. Imho, it needs no further work or "corrections", just gifted with love. (AND NEVER MENTION YOUR "UNHAPPINESS" ABOUT IT!) It will be loved.
peace

To me, it looks like there isn't enough quilting to hold all the parts together, so the crinkling shows up as wrinkling.... sorry...just had to do that. I agree with you, I don't really care for that look. I would rewet it, shape it back up, by pulling the wrinkles out and let it dry. If this gets it more like you want it, then add some more stitching to those blank areas. The quilting is the final glue that makes the quilt what it can be. If you have an embroidery machine, do a small flower or heart in those open areas. Or, just do waves, using free motion in those open areas. I think you will be happier if you can make it more appealing to your eyes. Please let us see what you come up with.

Arghh! I just wrote a post thanking everyone for their comments, then somehow I lost it, so here I go again.

Thank you all for takiing the time to post. I don't know what I was thinking when I labeled this a disaster. I think I went off the rails a little because I'm making this as a favor to a friend...anyway, I agree with everything that's been written here. My husband pointed out that all of my regular cotton quilts have the same look as this one (mostly I've used batiks, and they don't puff). Because the borders in this case are plain white, the crinkly effect is really obvious. I don't know of anything I could do at this point to remedy that. If anyone can think of any cool thing I could do (on the machine) with the borders, please chime in! The batting was 100% cotton Warm and Natural from the LQS.

Funny thing is, on some level I knew it needed some type of quilting on the borders, but I have so little actual quilting experience (always sent to the longarmer until now) that I was afraid I would really mess it up, so I skipped it.

I really need to get out of the habit of being my own worst critic. I now think it's a cute quilt and, perhaps best of all, it's DONE!

PS: I just saw the recent post from Barb in Louisiana about blocking it and doing some stitching on the borders. I will have to consider doing that. I do like the crinkle look, but you're right, it's more wrinkle than crinkle! On the other hand (there's always an other hand)...maybe it's good enough.

Thanks, everyone.

It looks nice to me..just the right amount of crinkling.

Kimarene, it's lovely. Really. Your friend will be thrilled.

I think if you added more fee motion quilting in the large open areas and re-wash it will great. W&N I believe needs to be quilted every 7-8 inches, so the large sections don't have enough quilting. I think it's a wonderful quilt.