Wetting your quilt -please share your secrets

[wendy w.]

A lot of you say on here that you wash/dampen the quilt at the end of the process to block it and remove whatever you have used on it. My question is how do you get it looking great again. Surely it will need pressing and then there would be little puckers and creases everywhere :?

How do you get round that?

[Nancy R.]

Hi Wendy -

I've only blocked one quilt, but I didn't have any trouble with creases or anything. It worked beautifully. Here's what I did:

- Soak the quilt in warm water in the tub. I needed warm water to dissolve the water-soluable thread used for the trapunto and to get rid of the blue marker.
- Put the quilt in the washer to spin out most of the water on a low spin.
- Spread an old sheet on the carpet, then spread out the quilt on top.
- Straighten the quilt and pin it to the carpet.
- Let it dry.

Nancy

[Margo C.]

Nancy, is there a particular reason why you start out in the tub?

I just put my quilt in the washing machine, fill it with cool water and let it soak about 15 minutes then spin the water out.

[wendy w.]

but do you iron it afterwards?

[Lois B.]

Most of the quilts I make are for using. The puckering with washing is part of what is suppose to happen with the quilt and also part of the look I want. All Ricky's quilts are washed often. I would only press a quilt during construction, never after washing.

[wendy w.]

Thanks I'll try it then with my Laura Nownes sample quilt - when I get it quilted :lol:

[Nancy R.]

Nancy, is there a particular reason why you start out in the tub?

I just put my quilt in the washing machine, fill it with cool water and let it soak about 15 minutes then spin the water out.

I have a front-loading washer so I can't do that. If I had a top-loader, I would use the washer. But the happy side-effect of using the tub was that I had complete control over the temperature of the water. I didn't want to use cold because I had just heard about someone who couldn't get the water-soluable thread to dissolve in the cold and it make the thread get stiff. But I also didn't want the water too hot since I had a wool batting. I ended up being happy that I could feel the water temperature and easily adjust it as I went along. It probably wasn't that important, but it did make me feel better.

Nancy

[Margo C.]

Makes sense to me! Thanks! Another thing to keep in mind when my 20 year old washer needs to be replaced!!

[Margo C.]

Wendy, if you follow the directions from Nancy, particularly the laying out (nice & smoothly) & leaving it to dry, I think that you will be very pleased with the results. The only problem is finding a large enough space to leave it out flat to dry, that won't get walked on :roll:

[wendy w.]

Must be why I made it smaller. No Nowhere in our house that doesn't get walked on by 16 furry feet. :roll:

[wendy w.]

In the process of laying it out to dry, you are using pins to pull out all those wrinkles (although I like the wrinkles so unless it is going in a show, I don't worry about them). REMEMBER: use pins that will not rust!!!!!

[Nancy R.]

Must be why I made it smaller. No Nowhere in our house that doesn't get walked on by 16 furry feet. :roll:

"Luckily" my cats are fairly destructive, so I have several rooms where nobody is allowed. :roll:

Nancy

[Kathryn S.]

Wendy, when I wet my quilts it is usually in the washing machine. I use the spin cycle to get a lot of the water out. sometimes I dry the quilt in the dryer so it's nearly dry. sometimes I lay out the quilt on a plastic tarpaulin and thick towels on the living room floor, patting it into place.

The wrinkles that appear in the quilt are from shrinkage, which I actually like the look of. If you want a crisp, unwrinkled surface on your quilt probably the best thing to do is keep it away from water.

I've never ironed a quilted quilt, so don't have any info on how that would turn out.I don't have a carpet to pin a quilt into, can't make any comments on how that goes either

Kathy

[Margo C.]

I just ran across this excellent tutorial about blocking a quilt for competition:

http://www.traceypereira.com/2010/08...ock-quilt.html

[Nancy R.]

Very nice instructions, Margo. Thanks for the link!

Nancy