Zimheidi

Hello

i am almost finished a wedding quilt for my very best friend. However, I have come to baste the 2nd half and there is a lot of stretch resulting in a lot of baggyness. In some cases there is 4 inches extra fabric. The extra fabric has appeared towards the edge of the quilt, but not close enough for me to chop it off. I cannot redo it, I don’t have time, plus it would be soul destroying to undo all the hard work. Any ideas how I can remedy this without having to unpick. I’ve thought about creating a dart to hide the extra fabric and covering it up with some appliqué hearts. Just wondering if there are tricks of the trade anyone could share to help me out this dilemma. I’ll try post photos to help you understand just how big my problem is

Lee in Richmond

I am not entirely clear on what you need to fix, but if a dart works I say go for it! My brief experience with crazy quilting always used a firmly-woven backing to stabilize all. Hope you can fix it.

Garden Gnome

If it is a crazy quilt where the fabric pieces are put together at odd angles and of odd sizes, then taking up the excess fabric by adding a dart might just look like a design feature.

bearisgray

did you baste from the center to the edges?

did the top lay flat before you started layering it with te backing and batting?

can/will you post pictures of the whole quilt? if we see more of it, we might get a better idea of what is happening.

when i have layered quilts, i have noticed some creeping. so - i have learned to start from the center to the edges or to start at one side and keep on going to the other side.

when starting at opppsite ends, i usually ended up with a pleat or bulge in the middle.



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Rhonda K

It is hard to see the problem in the pictures. Is the extra fabric along the borders? Can you post a picture of the quit while it is flat?

I would take the time to open the border seams and fix the issue. Trim off the excess fabric and seam them again. It could probably be done without removing the whole length of border.

Good luck!

Tartan

It looks like the borders are where the extra fabric is. Borders need to be sewn together and then the quilt edge measured and the body of the quilt pinned to match that measurement. Just sewing border after border around a quilt top ends up with this problem.
To fix you will either need to remove the borders, measure and pin and resew or make darts to take up the extra. Try pinning the extra fabric into darts in the back and see if it will lie flat. If it does and it looks okay, sew in the dart and cut away the extra fabric from the back. To disguise the extra seam when you quilt it, have a quilting line go over the extra seam.

JanieW

This video might give you some ideas. The quilter does an amazing job quilting in some huge fullness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Md...&feature=share

Zimheidi

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hi, here is a pic of the full quilt top. The quilt doesn’t have a border on it, the pucker is in the strips itself. Hope the attached pics helps to explain

feline fanatic

At first I thought your issue is as Tartan described and to a certain extent that is what caused it but it is the nature of the pattern so I don't see how you could have avoided it as you were working on it with so much bias and so many "slap and sew" borders with the way the quilt is assembled you couldn't attach those pieces any other way. The fact that there were so many compounded the issue at the edges. About the only thing that could have prevented that issue from happening was to heavily starch all your fabrics, and I mean stiff as cardstock starching, before starting to reduce the amount they could stretch.

So the only way you can resolve this issue now is to put in some darts and then quilt over them as much as possible to camoflauge them. They really aren't super noticeable once completed. I am thinking, if possible you may be better off putting in several smaller ones rather than one or two large ones.

I was faced with the same issue on a hand pieced client quilt several years ago. Here is a link to pictures I posted of the quilt. If you scroll down to the 5th picture where I posted a close up of the border you can see one of the tucks I had to take at the bottom of that pic. There is another tuck in that same picture closer to the top (near the burgundy diamond) and it is barely noticeable. In fact the only reason you can spot the one near the bottom of the pic is because it is a close up shot. Hand pieced quilt quilted by Feline Fanatic

And yes, I informed the client of the issue before doing the tucks or darts.

Edited to add, it really is a very pretty quilt!

Zimheidi

Feline fanatic, thank you so much, I think I’m going to go down the idea of the multiple mini tucks. I didn’t even think of that so thank you! I’ve really enjoyed making this quilt, the pics above are of the front. The quilt back is made up of fabric squares where guests at their wedding wrote their messages with permanent fabric markers, along with the left over squares filled with memories from their life together. I’m very proud of it, however I cannot deny that I now just want it finished and gone. I’ll get cracking on the mini tucks next week. Thank you again