Farm panel

This was supposed to be quilt number 2 received on Youth Day (16 June) but with the backing being too small it was pushed back somewhat.  When I finally got started I foresaw a big problem with putting the top on the frame.  It became very clear that the quilter made use of the slap and stitch method when adding sashing and borders and did not measure the blocks accurately beforehand.

This caused the blocks to make bulges and ripples and unfortunately quilting it on a long-arm will not solve this problem.  The drawback for any longarmer is that one cannot do what you initially intended to but have to find motifs or ways to manage the bulging.

I decide to load the side with the most ripples first in the hope that stitching that part down, it might not cause all the problems later on.  Then I also basted a wide curvy line across the entire quilt also hoping this will contain the fabric bulges in a specific section and not push all down to the bottom and be a bigger headache at the end.

I am by no means criticizing the quilter, I’m quite convinced we all did this at some stage until we realized the blocks are puffy or someone pointed it out to us.  My blog posts are my timeline of things done, accomplished and ways I attempted to handle problems but if I, in the process, I can teach someone a little something, so be it.

The basting beforehand seemed to help a lot but I still had to push and pull the fabric on top in order not to have major puffiness in some areas.

As they say, all is well that ends well and I think it didn’t come out too bad.