6 common quilting mistakes that are worth fixing
Even experienced quilters can make choices that affect how well a finished quilt wears, lies flat, and keeps its design visible. In this post, I’ll share six common quilting mistakes that are well worth fixing.
In this post, you’ll learn why and how you should avoid:
Even though you may want to use second-hand finds, be careful not to pick fabrics that already show signs of wear, or fabrics that are loosely woven.
In my earlier quilting days, I wanted to economise and sometimes picked unsuitable pieces for my quilts. For the Grass Is Greener quilt, I used loosely woven cottons for one of the blocks, and had to replace the pieces five years later.
Did you know that silk can wear itself out on its own? I didn’t know that when I was first starting to quilt. I would use my meagre fabric stash with very little thought for fabric type or wearability. So, I ended up choosing some silk scraps for my Thoughts Escaping into Summer quilt blocks, and today, those scraps are all in shreds – even though the other patches look almost as good as new.
The arrow in this image shows the shredded silk patch on the surface:
This is one of my early blocks, a small paper-pieced heart. Even from the photo, you can tell that most of the fabrics aren’t cotton. Because of that, the block would be risky to use in a bed or lap quilt (but it would work nicely in a quilted post card, for example).
Some fabric colours may run, so it is best not to pick those for a project that will also feature white fabrics.
And a fabric that feels like cotton may still turn out to be stretchy.
I once bought a pre-loved sheet for sashings, and the fabric had a bit of stretch in it. It was not noticeable in the construction phase, but my longarmer had to be extra careful when quilting the top. If I had attempted to quilt my top on a domestic sewing machine, I would have been in big trouble, trying to keep the quilt top from stretching and the quilt back from wrinkling.
Because fabric has a bit of give, it is possible to sew two slightly different-sized blocks together using force to get the edges to match. One can stretch the edge of the smaller block and feed the longer one – but one must not!
If you fiddle with the seam to get the edges to match, you will end up with problems.
If you do this to enough of your blocks, the resulting quilt surface will not lie flat. You can see this if you spread the surface on the bed or on the floor: the surface is much more three-dimensional than it should be.
It will be extremely challenging to quilt such an uneven surface, and it may prove to be impossible if you use a domestic sewing machine for quilting it. It is difficult enough to keep the backing piece even and wrinkle-free when quilting a perfect quilt surface on a domestic machine!
I believe that a less-than-flat quilt surface is the cause of most of the problems that quilters have in the quilting phase, such as ugly wrinkles or folds in the backing.
This is an excellent reason to use quilter’s best friends – rotary cutter, ruler and cutting mat – to trim your quilt blocks after you’ve pressed them flat.
Even tiny differences will add up when you are sewing together several blocks.
One of the simplest, good quilting habits is to trim your blocks to exactly the same size before sewing them together. You will thank yourself in the construction phase and in the quilting phase.
It may be tempting to cut the border fabric into the correct width only and then just match its long edge with the quilt edge and start stitching until you reach the other edge, then cut along the edge. The border will be the same lenght that way, right?
Wrong. Even with all straight edges in your piece in the center, this method is problematic. And if any of the outermost edges in your surface are on bias, this will not end well because those edges will stretch very easily.
The challenge is that your sewing machine feeds the fabric and if you are not careful, it will feed it enough to create excess. In a way, the seam will be longer than it should, and the whole border piece will be longer than the edge of the quilt. A walking foot will help, but it is better to be safe than sorry.
If you are attaching more than one border in this same way – such as one narrow one before a wide one – there will be even more excess after the second one. The result: your quilt top is more three-dimensional than it should be.
Essentially, such a quilt top is slightly bowl-shaped. Because it won’t lie flat, it will be nearly impossible to quilt nicely on a domestic sewing machine. Even your long-armer will have to use special skills to manage such a quilt top.
So, measure first! Measure the width of your initial surface from its middle. Cut two of your border strips/pieces to the correct width you need, then to the length that matches the measurement. Then pin the borders to match its ends to the edges of the initial surface. Pin the rest of the length and sew the seam.
When you have attached the first two border strips/pieces, press your surface, measure the length of the surface from the middle, then cut and sew the two remaining border strips/pieces in the same way as the first ones.
When you are attaching the binding strip, your sewing machine will feed the edge of the quilt more than it should. As a result, the bound edge ends up being longer than it should, and it will not lie flat. (Again, a walking foot will help.)
If you are fine with a wavy edge for your quilt, you don’t have to correct it of course. However, straight, unwavy edges tend to look better, and if you are binding a piece of wall art, wavy edges are usually a definite no-no.
How to avoid wavy edges, then?
Because I’ve finished so many quilts, I’ve learned to keep a bias-cut binding strip a bit stretched when attaching it. This is easiest to do when the edges of the quilt are nice and flat – which they are when they arrive from long-arm quilting.
When I still had to do my own quilting, the quilt edges were not as flat and even, but I don’t remember how I managed the bindings! I must have stretched the binding more because most of the results look ok.
However, I have encountered real challenges twice. For some reason, the edges of the 22 Words for Snow mini/doll quilt were extremely wavy.
As a crude fix, I used a technique from garment making and gathered the already bound edges so that they appeared straight. Not very elegant, but in a doll-size quilt, it did the trick.
The Tour de France wall textile had very dense quilting in its surface. The outer edges had less quilting and were loose and floppy, and I had to stretch the binding strip a lot to achieve straight edges for the piece. This is how the piece looked before I attached the binding:
I’m so binding-proud that I can no longer accept a wavy edge for my finished quilts. A straight and snug bound edge looks so much nicer!
I do remember that in my early quilting years, I did not recognise sparse quilting as a problem at all. I rather thought that the unquilted parts looked beautifully puffy! I was also worried that my quilting stitches would ruin some part of the quilt.
So, because I wanted my very first quilt to look soft and fluffy, I left large areas unquilted. (Another reason for this was the effort that quilting took.)
For a while, the quilt did look nice and invitingly full. The unquilted parts were puffy and I liked the effect. However, the puffy parts soon flattened out and there was nothing left of the original fullness.
When one thinks about this, it is obvious that lying or sitting on top of the quilt will flatten things out. The puffier parts will be flat and may even start looking wrinkly. No more grand softness!
This is another example from my early quilting time, a conscious choice to quilt sparsely. What was I thinking? This looks unfinished and strange!
There is another downside to sparse quilting, and it is the risk of bearding. I quilted the borders of my Thoughts Escape into Summer quilt unevenly: in parts, the quilting was dense, but there were large unquilted areas in between. I thought it looked decorative.
In time, the white batting started to ease itself through the dark border fabric in the unquilted areas, and the effect is not nice. You can see the bearding – the white dots on the black fabric – in the earlier image that showed the shredded silk patch.
Learn from my mistakes: make sure to quilt evenly and enough to avoid an unfinished look and the risk of bearding in your beautiful quilt.
Disappearance happens when your fabrics are too close to each other in value. Value contrast is important because the human eye sees the differences in value way more easily than the differences in colour. Colour contrast is not enough: our eyes just do not see it clearly.
So. A light-coloured fabric does not contrast with another pale colour. Two mid-value fabrics of different colours do not have value contrast. A dark colour will blend into another dark colour. Patches like that next to each other will look too similar, and your block design will disappear.
A quilt with uniform value throughout will not offer rhythm or form or focus to the eye.
Several of the following quilt blocks offer too little value contrast, and the repeating shapes are difficult to see – the design disappears.
If one block has poor value contrast in itself, you can compensate by surrounding it with blocks that have excellent contrast. However, some blocks can end up with so little value contrast that they are a lost cause – like this one of mine. If I had used this block, the quilt pattern would just have vanished into vagueness in this area.
In this Tilkunviilaaja blog, I share tips on quilting, and I also have a biweekly newsletter in which I share the recent posts. The newsletter will keep you up-to-date on my modern quilting endeavours. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe here.
- choosing fabrics that wear out too quickly in everyday quilts
- forcing the edges of blocks to match even when your quilt blocks are not of the same size
- border strips/pieces that are too long
- sewing a binding on so that you end up with wavy edges
- quilting your quilt too sparsely
- making problematic colour-value choices
1. Unsuitable fabrics in a quilt that is meant to be used
This is a mistake that you can – and should – correct even before beginning a project because fabric choice affects the durability of your quilt. When you are making a quilt that is going to be used and not only hang on a wall, you need to choose fabrics that will wear well.Even though you may want to use second-hand finds, be careful not to pick fabrics that already show signs of wear, or fabrics that are loosely woven.
In my earlier quilting days, I wanted to economise and sometimes picked unsuitable pieces for my quilts. For the Grass Is Greener quilt, I used loosely woven cottons for one of the blocks, and had to replace the pieces five years later.
The arrow in this image shows the shredded silk patch on the surface:
And a fabric that feels like cotton may still turn out to be stretchy.
I once bought a pre-loved sheet for sashings, and the fabric had a bit of stretch in it. It was not noticeable in the construction phase, but my longarmer had to be extra careful when quilting the top. If I had attempted to quilt my top on a domestic sewing machine, I would have been in big trouble, trying to keep the quilt top from stretching and the quilt back from wrinkling.
2. Quilt blocks that vary in size
This mistake refers to quilt blocks that should be of the same size but are not.Because fabric has a bit of give, it is possible to sew two slightly different-sized blocks together using force to get the edges to match. One can stretch the edge of the smaller block and feed the longer one – but one must not!
If you fiddle with the seam to get the edges to match, you will end up with problems.
If you do this to enough of your blocks, the resulting quilt surface will not lie flat. You can see this if you spread the surface on the bed or on the floor: the surface is much more three-dimensional than it should be.
It will be extremely challenging to quilt such an uneven surface, and it may prove to be impossible if you use a domestic sewing machine for quilting it. It is difficult enough to keep the backing piece even and wrinkle-free when quilting a perfect quilt surface on a domestic machine!
I believe that a less-than-flat quilt surface is the cause of most of the problems that quilters have in the quilting phase, such as ugly wrinkles or folds in the backing.
This is an excellent reason to use quilter’s best friends – rotary cutter, ruler and cutting mat – to trim your quilt blocks after you’ve pressed them flat.
One of the simplest, good quilting habits is to trim your blocks to exactly the same size before sewing them together. You will thank yourself in the construction phase and in the quilting phase.
3. Border strips/pieces that are too long
If you want your quilt top to have border strips or panels, measure first, then sew.It may be tempting to cut the border fabric into the correct width only and then just match its long edge with the quilt edge and start stitching until you reach the other edge, then cut along the edge. The border will be the same lenght that way, right?
Wrong. Even with all straight edges in your piece in the center, this method is problematic. And if any of the outermost edges in your surface are on bias, this will not end well because those edges will stretch very easily.
The challenge is that your sewing machine feeds the fabric and if you are not careful, it will feed it enough to create excess. In a way, the seam will be longer than it should, and the whole border piece will be longer than the edge of the quilt. A walking foot will help, but it is better to be safe than sorry.
If you are attaching more than one border in this same way – such as one narrow one before a wide one – there will be even more excess after the second one. The result: your quilt top is more three-dimensional than it should be.
Essentially, such a quilt top is slightly bowl-shaped. Because it won’t lie flat, it will be nearly impossible to quilt nicely on a domestic sewing machine. Even your long-armer will have to use special skills to manage such a quilt top.
So, measure first! Measure the width of your initial surface from its middle. Cut two of your border strips/pieces to the correct width you need, then to the length that matches the measurement. Then pin the borders to match its ends to the edges of the initial surface. Pin the rest of the length and sew the seam.
When you have attached the first two border strips/pieces, press your surface, measure the length of the surface from the middle, then cut and sew the two remaining border strips/pieces in the same way as the first ones.
4. Wavy bound edges
It may happen that the bound edge of your quilt is not straight and snug, but sort of wavy. The root cause is again the fact that all fabrics (at least those that are suitable for quilting) have a bit of give.When you are attaching the binding strip, your sewing machine will feed the edge of the quilt more than it should. As a result, the bound edge ends up being longer than it should, and it will not lie flat. (Again, a walking foot will help.)
If you are fine with a wavy edge for your quilt, you don’t have to correct it of course. However, straight, unwavy edges tend to look better, and if you are binding a piece of wall art, wavy edges are usually a definite no-no.
How to avoid wavy edges, then?
Because I’ve finished so many quilts, I’ve learned to keep a bias-cut binding strip a bit stretched when attaching it. This is easiest to do when the edges of the quilt are nice and flat – which they are when they arrive from long-arm quilting.
When I still had to do my own quilting, the quilt edges were not as flat and even, but I don’t remember how I managed the bindings! I must have stretched the binding more because most of the results look ok.
However, I have encountered real challenges twice. For some reason, the edges of the 22 Words for Snow mini/doll quilt were extremely wavy.
The Tour de France wall textile had very dense quilting in its surface. The outer edges had less quilting and were loose and floppy, and I had to stretch the binding strip a lot to achieve straight edges for the piece. This is how the piece looked before I attached the binding:
5. Too sparsely quilted surface
Making do with as little quilting as possible may be tempting because quilting takes effort and time. However, a sparsely quilted surface often looks unfinished, and such a quilt may not wear well over time.I do remember that in my early quilting years, I did not recognise sparse quilting as a problem at all. I rather thought that the unquilted parts looked beautifully puffy! I was also worried that my quilting stitches would ruin some part of the quilt.
So, because I wanted my very first quilt to look soft and fluffy, I left large areas unquilted. (Another reason for this was the effort that quilting took.)
For a while, the quilt did look nice and invitingly full. The unquilted parts were puffy and I liked the effect. However, the puffy parts soon flattened out and there was nothing left of the original fullness.
This is another example from my early quilting time, a conscious choice to quilt sparsely. What was I thinking? This looks unfinished and strange!
In time, the white batting started to ease itself through the dark border fabric in the unquilted areas, and the effect is not nice. You can see the bearding – the white dots on the black fabric – in the earlier image that showed the shredded silk patch.
Learn from my mistakes: make sure to quilt evenly and enough to avoid an unfinished look and the risk of bearding in your beautiful quilt.
6. Disappearing block design
Disappearing block design is another example of a quilting mistake that doesn’t happen at the sewing machine, but during fabric selection.Disappearance happens when your fabrics are too close to each other in value. Value contrast is important because the human eye sees the differences in value way more easily than the differences in colour. Colour contrast is not enough: our eyes just do not see it clearly.
So. A light-coloured fabric does not contrast with another pale colour. Two mid-value fabrics of different colours do not have value contrast. A dark colour will blend into another dark colour. Patches like that next to each other will look too similar, and your block design will disappear.
A quilt with uniform value throughout will not offer rhythm or form or focus to the eye.
Several of the following quilt blocks offer too little value contrast, and the repeating shapes are difficult to see – the design disappears.
Final thoughts
These common mistakes are easy to avoid when you know what to watch for. You may only need a bit of extra effort, no special tools or advanced skills. And if you’ve already made one of these mistakes, it is usually worth your while to fix it before finishing your quilt.In this Tilkunviilaaja blog, I share tips on quilting, and I also have a biweekly newsletter in which I share the recent posts. The newsletter will keep you up-to-date on my modern quilting endeavours. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe here.
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