Small project bunching up after quilting
 

I just finished free motion quilting (with Bernina BSR) a small wall hanging (19 x 25). It's called Chilly Charlie and it's a snowman head with a hat & bird and 3 large snowflakes. I did a really simple FMQ design of just loops and curves - no quilting on the snowman/hat/bird. It seems as if the areas that I quilted scrunched/shrunk up. This now makes the areas that I didn't quilt bunch and 'poof' up. It's especially noticeable around the snowflakes - they don't lay flat - like they have a bubble in them.

This is only the 3rd FMQ project that I've done and did not have a similar problem with the other 2. This is the first time I've done a project with the BSR. Perhaps I didn't keep the project pulled flat when I did the quilting? Any ideas on what I might have done wrong would be appreciated!

Could we see a picture? Then it would be easier to tell the severity of your issue and give pertinent advice.

Have no idea, can you post picture? Going too fast? Tension?

One cause of this is when you have some areas closely quilted and others not quilted at all. If you think about it, quilting stitches require the fabric to "bend" frequently and this causes the scrunching. This may be only part of your problem, however.

How did you baste the quilt? I'm thinking that, for quilting of this type, you really want to spray baste. Spray basting keeps all three layers in continuous contact with each other, providing some resistance to the "take up" of fabric that causes scrunching.

I did spray baste it. Do I need to wait a while before I start the quilting? Here's a picture. You can see that the hat is rippled/wavy and the bump in the middle of the snowflake.
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I think putting a button in the middle of the snowflake would just emphasize the bump that much more.

Actually I'm just trying to determine what I did wrong so that I don't do it again. Short of ripping the whole thing out or quilting over the snowflakes and snowman, I don't think there's much else I can do with this project - and that's okay. (At least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself!)

After seeing the photo, I'm sure part of the problem is the combination of dense quilting with large areas of no quilting.

However, I think this would not have been nearly as much of a problem if you had outline-quilted the snowflakes, snowman, hat, etc. before doing the background quilting. You probably would have wanted to quilt additional lines first as well, such as all around the hat brim.

What type of batting and thread did you use? I am thinking using a thin batting and fine thread would also help to minimize the problem somewhat.

Edit: If you look at the snowflake, you can see how you "pushed" excess fabric into the snowflake's center. If you had outline quilted around the snowflake before doing the background quilting, the fabric would not have been able to bunch up in the center like that. When quilting in-between the snowflake's spokes, you would want to move in towards the center first and then quilt your way out -- to push any excess fabric away from the snowflake's center instead of towards it. To do this, you might need to quilt on top of the previous outline quilting to get to the center.

It was a thin cotton batting. The top thread is Sulky 40 - a variegated silver metallic. I guess I didn't think the quilting was that dense but maybe it is.

Would stitching around those elements help now? I might try that as it probably wouldn't make it any worse.

It won't help in the same way now, because the excess fabric is already inside your appliques.

The snowflakes will probably lie flat if you are willing to quilt over them. In my experience, dense quilting will flatten a "puffy" area.

With the snowman and the hat, you *may* be able to spread some of the excess fabric to the outside of the applique areas. This would require smoothing the fabric towards the background as you sew around the applique -- not an easy thing to do. In my experience, it would be better to add quilting to the appliques to flatten them out. You could use matching thread to quilt straight lines in the hat, for example, and white thread to quilt swirls in the snowman. This would add a textural element too.