question about a possible repair
 

Hello... I finally made myself a quilt. And its big! I wanted it to be big. I sent it to be longarmed and she did a great job.... BUT my borders were not so great

One side is really bad - she had to fold the material to get the quilting completed.

What I am thinking is that maybe I can seam rip the quilting on the section of the border and the seam to the body of the quilt Then I can cut some of the material out and make a new seam to remove the extra fabric.

In my mind this seems doable - painful and sad but doable... but I wonder about the quilting and if it will all come undone if I rip some of it out

what do you guys think? Will the quilting all start to come undone if I rip out some of it on the border?

If you rip some of the quilting out, you will have to tie off the ends or, yes, over time it will come undone.

Will it be possible to tie off the ends of the quilting? Or is that something that is difficult to do successfully?

Is the pleat across the whole border area or in a limited spot? Did you already attach the binding?

Would it work to trim down the borders to eliminate the fold/pleat?

If you can post a picture, you may get more responses to solutions.

Was the top wavy before it was sent to the quilter?

Imho, I would not rip anything out. I would find a fine matching thread in the primary color of the backing and with tiny stitches - stitch the fold flat and call it good.

I think this is a better solution.

Depending on what it looks like - this is what I probably would do - most people do not look that carefully at borders, anyway.

I also agree. If it is for you personally I wouldn't worry about it. You probably won't even notice after stitching flat.

Me three. Either way you do it, you'll have a seam there. You might as well take the easy option and do it as Eparys describes, rather than ripping the quilting out, re-doing the seam, re-doing the quilting, and trying to tie off all the cut ends.

This is a Leah Day video on how to tie off the threads. There is another way that you use a regular needle with double thread, but I became impatient looking for it. You might find it. I could not get the search engine to distinguish between tying a quilt (as opposed to quilting it) and tying off quilt thread ends .

bkay

Did you ask the LAer for a suggestion on the best way to take care of the problem. She may be your best source.

Yes, I had to do that recently on a t-shirt quilt. No amount of ripping and resewing would flatten that border.

Hey there... thank you so much for your replies and thoughts. My long armer thinks that I can leave this as they are. BUT this really bothers me

The problem that I had was the size of the quilt. I wanted a good size quilt and I don't have a floor big enough in my house to really spread it out and get to work on it very well. That being said the borders were probably messed up before I dropped it off to be quilted

There is no waviness through out the quilt.. just the borders are a mess. Its actually just 2 sides. The left side is not so bad and I could probably live with how that is. But the right side is a real mess. I have attached some pictures

I did watch the Leah Day video and she makes it look possible ha ha

Have you washed the quilt? Sometimes when it crinkles up a little bit, things just disappear. It's worth a try.

The one time I had a wavy border, I actually put a pleat in my extra fabric and used the long arm to stitch over the pleat, maintaining the pantograph pattern. After the quilt was washed, you couldn't find it.

I don't know how I have been that lucky, because I don't do all that measuring 3 times, averaging bit. I do stretch my borders, just a very little bit, so they don't end up too loose.

It almost looks like the border got "wrinkled" or "wadded" or pulled off-kilter somehow. Or that the quilter just put it on "auto-quilt" and walked away while that part was being stitched and the fabric shifted. It would bother me, too - a lot!

I was thinking that the puffiness would be able to "fold out and stitch down" - not from those pictures.

The only thing I can think of that might work - and would be a Problem In The Area - would be to unstitch all that quilting on the border - lay out the quilt on something flat - and then pleat out the fullness and stitch it down yourself - so it would look like a seam line when it it stitched - and have the borders requilted.

Thanks everyone. I think a washing will resolve the one side issues, they are not that bad.

I think I am going to try to pick out the quilting and then work on the extra fabric. But I do like the idea of trying to fold the extra fabric instead of cutting and making a new seam.

I am going to set this aside for now.... maybe Thanksgiving weekend I will have the courage to work on it. While everyone else is shopping I can be ripping out the quilting ha ha