The polyester nightmare
#1
OK. My friend gave me her grandmother's quilt top for me to quilt. It has polyester blocks put together with cotton blocks. The polyester has pulled up and would need to be stretched back to square before quilting. Any suggestions on how to do that? Should I use some sort of stabilizer on those blocks? If so, what do you recommend that I use?
#2
Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Middle Tennessee
Posts: 702
My grandmother and great grandmother made me a quilt several years ago that was a mix of cotton and polyester. It was a nightmare! For years, everytime my grandmother visited, she ended up doing repairs on it. It finally got to the point that it wasn't reparable anymore. It's really sad because they are both gone now.
As she was going through all the repairs, we discussed that in OUR opinion, the only help for it would be to go over every seam with a top side zigzag stitch to try to hold it together. We never did that - it was a king size quilt and a lone star pattern, so there were a lot of seams.
Good luck with however you decide to deal with this.
Carol B
As she was going through all the repairs, we discussed that in OUR opinion, the only help for it would be to go over every seam with a top side zigzag stitch to try to hold it together. We never did that - it was a king size quilt and a lone star pattern, so there were a lot of seams.
Good luck with however you decide to deal with this.
Carol B
#4
Power Poster
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Western Wisconsin
Posts: 12,930
Originally Posted by lnordyke
OK. My friend gave me her grandmother's quilt top for me to quilt. It has polyester blocks put together with cotton blocks. The polyester has pulled up and would need to be stretched back to square before quilting. Any suggestions on how to do that? Should I use some sort of stabilizer on those blocks? If so, what do you recommend that I use?
If the only problem is squaring up the blocks, you can do that by blocking them with starch. Sharon Schamber demonstrates this method in several Youtube videos.
Since you mentioned shrinking, this one might be the most relevant:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQkF0...next=1&index=2
However, if my theory about the cotton blocks being larger than the poly blocks is correct, what you would really need to do is shrink the cotton blocks. That would be this video (which has a 2nd part to it):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6apl...next=1&index=1
Heavy starch will stabilize the blocks through the quilting process. For this type of quilt, you would want to quilt lines very close together (at the least, quilting lines on each side of every seam line) to reduce strain on the seams with use. Polyester frays much more easily than cotton, so the quilting is essential to avoid stress on the polyester.
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