Old 06-19-2014, 04:27 AM
  #29  
jtrott522
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 16
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Originally Posted by ArchaicArcane View Post
Before I started this quilt, I did NOT pre-wash the fabric. My cousin, a long time quilter made me promise not to. I DID however pre-shrink the batting (got it soaking wet, pushed out as much water as I could then put it in a warm dryer)

The quilt started out 96" x 96" I admit that when I initially put it on the bed, I didn't measure it to know how much it "shrunk" from the quilting.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]479619[/ATTACH]

Now that it's been washed (I needed to get the remaining blue lines out) - the seams sit in a different spot on the bed, so I did measure it. 89" on the one side, I didn't measure the other side.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]479620[/ATTACH]

That's roughly 8% shrinkage. That's more than the 3% I expected from the batting even if it wasn't preshrunk.

Then I made a placemat with some of the left over fabrics and did not preshrink the batting. I quilted it, hated my quilting, ripped it all out, then quilted it again. I washed it to get the old needle holes out.

It went from 19.5" x 13.5" to 16.5" x 11.5" - roughly 18% shrinkage. (Previously, it had fit the laptop table it's sitting on)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]479621[/ATTACH]

I do know that I can take these out of the dryer early and stretch and pin them back to their size, or close to it, like a show quilt, but I wanted to know if there was anything I could or should have done differently to minimize the shrinkage to begin with.
I don't prewash anything and I've never had that much shrinkage. I dry mine on low heat or even line dry.
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