Warping Around the World Quilt
 

Hi All, I've been working on a tiny around the world quilt for months. the squares are 1". I just laid it out and and the whole outer 3rd of the top is "stretched". It will not lay flat no matter how much I pull to tighten it from the edges. I'm so disappointed because I had dreams of making this quilt much larger than it is now but I'm afraid to put more time into it if the warping will just get worse. It is made out of a loose weave shot cotton and I am hand piecing it. Wondering if that is why I'm having so much stretching. Any ideas or help in fixing this would be much appreciated!

haven't made one of these,but wondering if you did it in rows or basically worked on quarter of the quilt at a time? I've always seen it worked on in quarters, I'm guessing to keep it straighter. the loose weave of the shot cotton may be a problem too. Try to really cover the wavy areas with spray starch and when almost dry, hit with steam--that is trick that long arm quilters use to deal with wavy borders. also, don't know how you plan to quilt it, but using a double bat (80/20 on bottom and wool or med loft poly on top) will also "fill in" some of the puckers. Good luck--very pretty.
(P.S. I'd probably not make larger with that much waving unless I took apart enough to solve the issue first)

Your TATW colors are beautiful, and the center of the quilt looks very flat. I don't know if it's an optical illusion because of the angle of the picture, but the squares in the outer rounds look bigger than those in the center. That would definitely cause the quilt not to lay flat. You're right that the problem needs to be solved before you add more to the quilt. I would first start measuring the squares to see if the size has changed. If it has, you may need to take off the outer sections and perhaps use them in another quilt, or for the back of this one. I can't even imagine the amount of work you've put in hand piecing. The waviness looks like more than the fabric stretching to me, especially given that the center looks so wonderful.

I'm not very experienced yet. So I have no solutions for you sadly. I just wanted to say though that I hope you figure it out, this quilt is beautiful so far!

I would try quiltingshortimer's suggestion to try to shrink the outside edges. Hopefully it will work. Although this is not what you want to hear, If it doesn't shrink up, then you may have to remove the really loosely woven cotton. From past experience, I can tell you that it will probably shrink more than you think. I used a loosely woven muslin backing for one of my first quilts and it almost was a fiasco. The top got really puffy and wrinkled a lot more than I thought it would. One of my daughters loved it and I gave it to her. It almost became a dog bed.

I find that tightly woven fabric has almost no shrinkage and the looser the weave, the more stretch when working with it and more shrinking when it is laundered.

Edited to add: I wouldn't use a stitch in the ditch for the quilting, because this may accent the problem. Some type of overall design can hide flaws.

Maybe I would soak it in a mixture of water and some StaFlo starch. Block it and lay it flat to dry and then steam iron it. That could work and then I would decide whether or not to make it larger. I made a “Circa 1880” quilt by Pam Buda and was fortunate enough to meet her. She told our group how she starched her fabrics and ironed them after they were dry before she sewed them together. It was time consuming but it worked keeping those little pieces straight and unstretched. I love your quilt. Please let us know what you decide. I so hope you find a solution.

I agree with the ideas of starching and steaming. Instead of a double batt all over you could use one batt but double where puffs happen as you quilt. I did that once with a quilt with loose areas and was surprised at how well it came out.

Beautiful quilt!

I agree with the starch & steam the others have suggested. I've had a lot of luck with taming bias with steam, and I think this is where the problem starts.
I'm assuming your squares are cut on the straight of grain, which means once assembled, the bias in each square goes east-west and north-south across your quilt? Starching your fabrics heavily before cutting into them at all will help a lot, but you'll need to see if you can fix what you've got so far first.

You can try stitching over some of the seams tucking in just a thread or two more along those edges. Remember that even though the adjustments seem tiny, each one you do is double because it is two thicknesses of fabric. Think I'd try these "narrow mini darts" about 5 blocks deep, maybe every 3-4 rows. Probably only need a couple (3-ish is my guess) each side.

When I do projects like this, I also find it easier to graph it out and make block units but I don't do hand work.

You are right! I guess that's what I get for "eyeballing" my 1/4" seam allowance :-(. OMG I'm so frustrated. I would literally be better starting over at this point as only about the first quarter of the quilt are actually 1" squares. . I guess lesson learned. Take the time to starch and mark sewing lines to begin with ....