Tips and Tricks for Fixing Quilting Mistakes

March 24, 2016 5 Comments

Hi Everyone!

A while back I was working on a mini quilt, and the backing tucked under as I was quilting it, and I stitched right over backing. Not once, but twice. Ugh! I know we’ve all made mistakes like this, but can be so frustrating and feel almost impossible to to fix without undoing your hard work. While I was fixing my little “boo-boo”, I took some pictures so I could share a few of my tips and tricks for fixing quilting mistakes like this.

This is my first mistake, in all its glory. If you look closely at the left hand side, you’ll see that the backing folded and tucked under twice. This one was really easy for me, haha.I had already done quite a bit of quilting, so I really didn’t want to “unquilt” my quilt and have to quilt it again. I always make my backing 4″-6″ bigger than my quilt top, which gave me some forgiveness and allowed me to cut the fabric away rather than pull out my stitches.

First, I cut my backing to within the stitch lines. Make sure you don’t cut any of your stitches. Using scissors with a short blade and a blunt tip like these from Famore Cutlery help quite a lot.

You will need to cut the fabric from each piece of quilting. You should cut as close as possible to the stitching without tearing it.

You can pull the fabric’s fibers from the quilting using your fingers.

You can snip the fabric as necessary to free it from the stitches. The fabric will pull apart easily if it is cut close to the quilting.

This picture shows you how amazing my mistake was. Continue snipping the fabric, but be careful not to cut your stitching.

It’s almost done! It’s almost like taking the fabric out of the quilting. It’s satisfying. I hate to get out there and pull the weeds, but when I pull one out, root and all.