jbyers

First-time quilter here, working on a baby quilt for my soon-to-be-born baby girl. Followed a tutorial online which worked well, aside from two areas of what I'm calling bunching on the backside of the quilt. From reading online, I now know what I should have done- walking foot, basting gun, tension, etc. However, I'm past that preventative stage now

Tips on how to easily fix these bunches? Photo attached. I did seam rip one of the areas to see what I can do, but I just don't know what to do with the extra fabric.

Thanks in advance!

QuiltnNan

I'm sorry you are dealing with this. It happened to me on my last quilt. I had to unsew the problem areas. One small section near the edge was easily smoothed out without unsewing a larger area. But the problems more inside the edge required unsewing most of the sewing out to the edge to smooth that out.

juliasb

I can guarantee that we have all been there. Before I took things all apart I would try releasing the stitches that lapped over and caused the pucker. Many times that helps then following the same sewing line give it a bit of a stretch. Now always but sometimes this works.. Starting from the middle of your quilt (this pattern)go diagonal from end to end and work outward. I have to tell you I am an experienced quilter and I just made a charity quilt that I had this problem with. In many instances I had to take out the entire row. I was not a happy quilter to have to do all that frog stitching.I am sure no matter what you do or don't do it will be well received because of all the effort you put into making this special gift. What your eye sees will not be seen by others. Only the love will be seen and with great joy.

bearisgray

This *might* work -

Are you familiar with the term "easing in" fabric when joining two pieces of fabric together? It's basically getting a slightly longer piece to lay fairly flatly against a slightly shorter piece - either by stretching the bottom piece while sewing the seam together or by distributing the extra fullness of the longer piece into a very slight gather instead of a pleat. This is often done with set-in sleeves.

Anyway -

You could try unsewing the quilting between the crossing lines - then - from the back side - try redistributing the fullness between the crossing lines.

Resew from the back. You would end up with a bit of "puffiness" - but that might be more tolerable than the "pleats".

There would be the issue of reburying the sewing ends, but that might be more tolerable than a complete redo.

Watson

I agree with bearisgray. If you can clip the threads between and resew from the back, you could likely get your sewing machine to ease or "take up" that amount of fabric so there wasn't a pucker.
I tried to find a video but couldn't, so I'll try to explain.

If you have the side with too much fullness facing up (the red fabric), then go slowly and gently resist for a couple of stitches, while urging the top fabric under the needle. (Usually, the feed dogs will take up more fabric than that on top, but you're trying to get the machine to takeup the upper fabric by resisting the feed dogs slightly.) Little by little, the upper fabric will smooth out to match the length of the lower fabric and you'll be left with no pucker.

Wish I could show you or perhaps someone can explain it better.

Watson

cjsews

After you try the above methods if you still find you have issues there is one more option. Simply appliqué a small heart over the problem pucker. It will be cute and nobody will know you had a problem

congrats on the new baby and new hobby. Welcome to the board

laurlync

I'm a longarm quilter and when dealing with borders or blocks with excess fabric, I can usually shrink the fabric just a bit by spraying with starch and pressing. I wouldn't recommend using water because it could cause fabric bleeding. So maybe try removing the stitches, starch, press and restitch. Hope that helps.

Iceblossom

First off, for a first project you are not doing badly at all!

But you see the advantage of a print back over a plain one, a busy print can hide a lot of flaws, however it doesn't let the quilting show off to it's full advantage but that can wait until we get to where we want to show off the quilting... still doesn't happen that often for me!

The easiest solution at this point is to stitch down the largest folds by hand and ignore the little "pookies". Use a thread that matches the background, hold down the pleat and blind stitch it down and then move onto the next one.

Depending on the front of the quilt, once you've done that you might consider going back in a square grid over your diagonal one. Or not, up to you! It was made with love and your baby is going to love it and you without perfection.

For the future, I like the spray baste, other people use glue or other things. It takes awhile to get used to it (I think most people overspray in the beginning), but it gives me the best finish when quilting it down. I layout small tops on my dining room table (when I was working I had access to a huge conference room table, could do a queen in length and just a bit of fall over the sides, some people with garages and more space like the folding ping pong tables because they fold up when not in use and you can get them for free/cheap at garage sales). If you need to use weights like canned goods to hold it smooth that helps too.

Even on a baby quilt when I spray baste I still do it in sections. I have fairly short arm length and typically only work with about 1-2 feet at a time.

Tartan

​A well basted quilt or Hobbs 80/20 fusible batt would have helped avoid puckers on the back. To fix the puckers you have, you would need to unpick the lines of quilting and start over. I would press the extra fullness into a dart and hand stitch it closed with an invisible ladder stitch. You could even hand embroider a little vine along it to further disguise it. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Libits

I’ve only been quilting for about 6 months but have sewn for much longer. This happened to me on some of my earlier quilts. I do use a talking foot and I’ve learned to smooth! Smooth! Smooth! (using my hands) That helped me a lot.