mistakes I've made
 

I have been quilting for many years and I made a dumb mistake. A friend asked me to make a quilt for her new grandchild due in January. She brought nice fabric at a good quilt shop. After I cut all the pieces, I remembered that I should have washed the fabric first. I put the quilt together and it looked fine and for some strange reason I decided to wash the top and back before quiliting. I used a gentel cycle. What a mistake. There was so much lint that I thought the seams would not hold. I checked all the seams and they looked fine but it upset me, hoping that it will hold up after I machine quilt it. When I quilt it I plan to do some extra quilting at all the seams to insure that it holds together. I know I will never make that mistake again.

I did that too. It was quite a lesson to learn. I had to repair two seams. Ugh! Glad your seams all held up! :)

And glad it didn't bleed. I embroidered a table topper and had little blue dots on it for quilting, was supposed to wash out. I had something spilled on a corner (coffee I think) so I washed it to make sure the coffee didn't stain it, since I didn't want to do all that work for a stained end result. You guessed it. The stain came out,but so did some of the little blue dots LOL

It is for this very reason that I dont wash until after all quilting has been done. My favourite mistake is either getting a peice of fabric or even a whole block up-side down and only realising it after everything is so advanced that it would take forever to correct.

My daughter did that once and it raveled out a lot! It was a good quality heavier fabric. She learned not to do it again too. Each day we learn something new.

I have never been able to get those blue dots out.

I did that same dumb thing. Washed the quilt top before sandwiching and quilting. What a mess! Alll seams had to be pressed again--took me hours! Lesson learned!

Does nobody in America line dry fabric. I always wash first but if I had a situation like this I would gentle wash in the laundry tub then hang on the line. I know a lot of you ladies get snow and other bad weather but surely everyone has some fine weather.
I know I'm lucky where I live because we get lots of sunshine (Queensland is known as the Sunshine State) but I haven't owned a dryer in almost 20 years. The only fabric that gets washed in the washing machine is muslin in multiple meters. Every thing else is hand washed, squeezed gently then line dried. After it's dry it is folded or put on boards. I don't iron until I'm ready to use fabric.

When I read the original post I cringed.......of course you got all that lint.....all those open raw edges just got beaten up with the agitator of the w/m.......then thrown into a hot dryer and again thrown around and around......if it had been sandwiched, quilted, bound and then washed (why) it would have been contained and viola not a thread to be found. If I did "wash" my fab (and I have when doing a tablerunner, placemat-so not crinkly look after use/wash)....I just put into a plastic "dishpan" from the dollar store and soak for a few minutes...then hand wring gently and hang on my outside line-(good weather) or in laurndy room where I do have a retractable clothes line...but I am from the "really old school" BTW when I do suspect a fab might run/bleed, I clip a piece before I even start to cut, put into cup/glass of really hot water and if it's going to bleed....it will do it there.......then I just don't use that fab....My reasoning on this is: if I give the piece as a gift the receiver will not remember to use whatever chem is needed to control the bleed and thus will make a "mess" of my gift....if it is mine, I really don't want to be bothered fussing with catchers or whatever when I do wash whatever it is.......Did our quilt/centors do any of this? I wonder how many of their quilts bled when they were washed...and didn't they use homemade soap made of lye? Just wondering..........as an aside: no one in family/friends have "allergies"......