wavy wall hanging quilt

[Juliet W.]

most of my quilts are to hang on the wall, until now i couldnt find out the reason that it is not hanged striate on the wall.
on my giant Dahlia it was the center, and that is understandable. but the other quilts are wavy on all the quilt.
any one has a solution for it please?

[Juliet W.]

Becky...do your wall hangings have borders? If so, how do you measure them? Do you cut the borders to the measurement thru the center of the quilt and not the measurement of the outside of the quilt? If you cut to the center measurement and ease your outside edges to fit your border pieces... that should help. If you are doing that already...then I am at a loss to help you. We will have to wait till Margo logs on and can offer usual good advice...

[Dawn S.]

Becky, makesgeese is right on measuring through the middle. While watching the judging at the fair this year, the one common problem with a LOT of quilts was a wavy border/edge. Some people do not use bais binding for this reason. I like to keep all "stretch" out of the edges, so try to use the lengthwise grain of the fabric for my bindings. And, that binding gets measured and marked according to the center/middle measurements of the quilt. Dawn

[Terry K.]

Becky, when you measure your quilt, does it measure the same on each side as it does through the middle--both for the width and length? If it doesn't, then that is why you are getting a little wave action because your quilt isn't square. . .I would know that because I have a difficult time making a square quilt--whether it is a rectangle or not! hehe!

[Terry K.]

Dawn...I never thought about a bias binding allowing for some give on the edges. From now, unless my fabric choice (stripe or a little check) calls for a bias binding, or I am doing a scallop border... I will cut my binding on a straight grain. Thanks for the tip!

[Dawn S.]

Makesgeese, If you don't have enough lenghthwise fabric, crosswise will work too. It has a little more stretch than lengthwise, but not near the stretch that bias has! Dawn

[Margo C.]

most of my quilts are to hang on the wall, until now i couldnt find out the reason that it is not hanged striate on the wall.
on my giant Dahlia it was the center, and that is understandable. but the other quilts are wavy on all the quilt.
any one has a solution for it please?

Becky, you've gotten some good advice already for future projects. For the ones already finished, sometimes blocking a wall hanging will help make it hang straighter. This is what I do for cotton quilts:

Wet it really well, either in the washing machine (spin the water out) or with a spray bottle. Then lay it flat (I always do mine on the floor) and be sure that it is square on the floor by measuring the sides and using a large square-up rotary ruler to check the corners. If you do it on the carpet, you can use pins into the carpet and carpet pad to keep it square. Let it dry COMPLETELY before you move it. That should help some.

Also remember that some battings will cause a wall hanging to be friendly and wave at you!! A heavy cotton batting will hold it's shape lots better on the wall than a polyester or wool or silk batt will. A needlepunched cotton batting is a good choice for wall quilts. Something like Warm and Natural or Warm and White will do well.

Also...are you aware that battings have grain lines just like cotton fabrics do? Gently tug on any of your battings and you will see more "give" in one direction. Being aware of that, you can always check to make sure that the direction with the least amount of stretch is used from the top to the bottom of your wall hangings!

Hope that helps!

[Margo C.]

thank you all, well it seems that i need to print this page and take care of those important points for my next quilts to come.
thanks again for all the advices.
cheers
becky/the netherlands

[Margo C.]

I just wanted to add another thought to the good advice you have already received. I've had a couple of quilts that turned out with wavy boarders after the quilting process. I had measured for each boarder as described above, but in the case of at least one of these problem quilts the fabric I had used for the outside boarder had more stretch to it. I think it was an old fabric, so who knows if it was a good cotton fabric. My mistake. Anyway, when I quilted the boarder it really waved. The lesson I learned there was that if I had any doubt I would try to stabilize the boarders with stitching the next time. Recently I made a sampler quilt out of leftover blocks and designed a friendships star boarder for it, but in the process the boarder was slightly longer than it needed to be. I wasn't going to make the boarder over so I used it as a learning opportunity and when I had my quilt pin basted the first thing I did was to stitch in the ditch down and across every other straight line of blocks in the body of the quilt and then around each of the boarders. That done, I saw that the outside boarder didn't look too bad, so I carefully basted the outside edge. Then I went back and quilted in the designs I wanted in the blocks and then in the boarders. I haven't put the binding on yet, but I'm pretty happy with the way it laying right now without even having to block it yet.

A couple of other things I've learned in the school of hard knocks are not to quilt a heavier design on the outside boarder than what is on the interior of the quilt. I know, we've been told to evenly quilt, but I usually have to have a lesson the hard way. ops: I have also seen people use a 'piano key' quilting design in boarders that are a problem where they stitch horizontal evenly spaced straight lines all the way around the quilts boarder to help take up the extra bulk. I haven't tried that, but it is an attractive treatment and looked like it worked well.
Cindy

[Norma H.]

There has been some discussions about bindings and quilts not hanging flat lately. I have seen a show with a judge called Holice Turnbow, where he is sharing a lot of tips on binding. The link is http://www.quilterstv.com/channel/video/0?video=1433
Another member has asked for this information recently, but I can't find that thread, so I just hope, she looks for new posts. Maybe someone else can remember and send her the link.

One thing I find important while pinning the binding on the quilt is to have it lay flat on the table. This to prevent stretching the edge.

[Norma H.]

I do believe that having the binding under slight tension whilst letting the quilt run free (if you see what I mean) helps with wavy edges. Not too much tension mind.