Grace Quilts

Please note: All pictures are clickable for a larger image – also I’ve put a highlighted ‘footnote’ to the posts where I go into more detail / steps regarding each of the points I’ve discussed – Please feel free to click on those ‘footnotes’ for more detailed information / pics.

I t’s been suggested that I put all my flannel experiences, tips n hints on one page, so that maybe other’s can benefit from my battle with flannel (which I won ), and I thought, why not – maybe this can help someone else while they use flannel in their quilts.

I’m going to cover specifically using flannel as a BACKING only – not the top or the batting. I haven’t had these issues using flannel as a batting.

I decided to use flannel as a backing based on several suggestions for Gran’s quilt as she doesn’t like the weight of a regular quilt. Sounded like a great idea at the time.

I actually tripped across a reference to progressive shrinkage while researching shrinkage rates of flannel vs cotton batt. Boy did that get MY gears going! This progressive shrinkage implies that it constantly shrinks. So in a nutshell progressive shrinkage loosely defined:

The easiest way to deal with this – wash your flannel before you cut it. I washed my flannel twice in hot water and dried it in a hot dryer each time.

I did find my answer of shrinkage for cotton and flannel tho – cotton shrinks 3%, flannel 5%.

I pieced my back and went blissfully along, unaware of the ‘fun’ that was waiting for me. I had decided to tie this quilt (I’ve never tied a quilt before and I thought it would fit this quilt nicely) I talked to Carmen about this as I had no experience with this and she gave me some wonderful ideas² ..

1. Don’t use embroidery floss – she’s never NOT seen it break – use yarn or perle cotton
2. Use a double surgeon’s knot (square knot) for tying – I started out that way, but with the bulk of some of my seams, it was just to much, so I went to a single square knot.
3. quilt about every 8″, so that if your ties do break, you won’t have it flapping in the breeze
4. do your ties roughly 4 – 6″ apart

So I basted this quilt, and did my quilting lines. Every thing was fine, until I did the diagonals – altho i didn’t notice anything at the time .. Then I tied it based on the above. As I was getting ready to put the binding on I noticed that I had puckers in the backing³ .. I was a little bit more than stunned .. it’s been YEARS since I’ve seen puckers in the back of my quilts .. (and that was because I basted in a hurry) This was when I found out that other ladies starch their flannels like crazy before they do any quilting with them .. I starched around the borders like crazy and then put the binding on .. not ONE pucker .. so that worked. Which means that when all is said and done, I would be going back and ripping the puckers out, starching them, and re-quilting those areas, which was at the borders.

I get the binding all sewn on and hand stitched down. I lay it on the floor and my God – I was about to be drowned by the tsnumai that was barreling around the quilt edges⁴ .. oh jesusmaryjoseph .. God help me .. I canNOT give this quilt to Gran looking like THIS!! I got all depressed for a few hours, then an idea rather hit me – I thought of using a gather stitch (Thank you mum for teaching me to sew )

With some experimentation, I decided to use a handquilting thread, and use a long basting stitch for the gathers. I gathered the quilt edges until they were flat, stitched a loop twice, then knotted it off. Went around the whole quilt doing this then resewed down the binding. Glory Be!! The quilt laid flatter than it had. ⁵

Now the puckers in the back .. I ripped them out (I got lucky – only 3 bad spots) and then starched the snot out of them .. requilted those spots, turned it over and not a pucker left!! If it wasn’t for the double line of quilting, you would NEVER know it ⁶..

Put it it the wash (again on HOT water), dried it and then laid it on the floor .. some of the waves translated to the middle, which I am fine with – it’s a rather ‘informal’ quilt, but the important thing .. there were NO MORE waves at the edges! ⁷

So in a nutshell

1. wash your flannel in hot water and dry it at least twice
2. starch, starch, starch, starch like crazy .. make it like a board if you have to .. but you do NOT want it to easily stretch – doing these 2 steps you should eliminate any issues you might have with using flannel as a backing
3. when you baste, baste 2″ apart instead of the normal 4″
4. If you do have waves and puckers, they are easily fixed with hand gathering and a lot of starch again

I honestly thought that I would have to toss this quilt, but was able to ’save’ it so I would feel good giving it as a gift. Not that she would have cared, but I would have . it just wasn’t in givable condition as it was.

I hope this helps and if you need more information, you can check out the posts with the tags of gran’s quilt or with the tag of flannel.