Ragann63

Hello everyone! I looked for information on this topic under past posts and didn't find anything. I am starting to "play" with my short arm. I did pretty good with corner medallions, but have had a little trouble with the stretches of fabric on all four sides.

Hopefully, I can make myself clear enough for everyone to understand my question!

The center of my quilt is a large star. There are 10" strips of solid material on all four sides, with smaller star blocks in each of the four corners. I quilted medallions on the small corner blocks (Cotton Candy pattern) and did the side strips in Cotton Candy as well. The large center star I quilted in Chantilly Lace.

I first quilted the small star, then the strip, then the other corner star. Then I rolled down to the center and quilted the entire center. At the end I quilted the corner star, strip and corner star. I unpinned the quilt and turned it to do the other two side strips. At that point I notice a lot of extra backing fabric on the two unquilted sides caused by the center pulling in because of the quilting.

Cotton candy is a light pattern and Chantilly Lace is a little heavier. Was that the problem, or is there a different method when quilting borders separate from the main quilt?

I hope all that made sense!

kathy

you should stabilize the quilt especially if you're going to turn it
stitching in the ditch alongn the borders and some if not all of the blocks, 1/8" around all sides
it is also sometimes better to do all borders before the interior
yes it's a pain sometimes but most worthwhile results don't come easy
all your quilting needs to be balanced in density, of course it can't be exact but needs to be real close
when i messed one up the way you described, i had to take out enough stitching to get things straightened out and do it again.