Puckers after the fact
 

Hi, All,

A friend of mine recently gave me an-almost-finished quilt that she asked me to help bind with her. She's a new quilter. The top of the quilt looks great, but the back has a lot of puckers. We talked about ways she can avoid puckers and drag in the future, but I'm wondering if there's anything we can do to smooth out the puckers on this one, if only a little. I'd hate for her to tear out all the quilting she's done and start all over.

The worst of the puckers probably have about 1/4" excess fabric. There might be 1/2" on one or two of them. I've thought about folding them over, pressing, and then doing a little slip stitch. Or maybe hand-applique-ing some patches?

The quilt is for her college-aged son, so it will probably get moved around and laundered a lot.

Any tricks?

Thanks!

If you have an asterisk stitch on your machine, you could put a few
here and there and I think that should help. It's like tying a quilt but
without any tails.

EasyPeezy, have never thought of that. Great suggestion!

"The worst of the puckers probably have about 1/4" excess fabric. There might be 1/2" on one or two of them. I've thought about folding them over, pressing, and then doing a little slip stitch."

I did this once on a quilt that had one large pucker right in the middle of a quilt. I didn't press, just folded and slip stitched. It seemed to work fine although I don't know how it held up over time. You couldn't really even see it after the slip stitching. My customer wasn't very particular this quilt as she felt her piecing wasn't very good anyway. One of her first quilts.

I think all of these ideas would work, and a combination of them might work best. Any or all will likely make the back look much better and would be worth the investment of time and energy.

Oh my! All of these ideas sounds GREAT! Thank you all so much! This is not the first time this forum has saved a quilt!

Some great ideas here.

A college aged young man might find the Frankenstein scar idea unique and appealing!

If you haven't already pre-washed the fabrics in the quilt, washing the quilt may just make the smaller puckers disappear or at least not as noticeable. For the larger puckers, I would undo the stitching in just those areas and see if you couldn't re-stitch and smooth out the pucker.