At Road, as with other shows probably, there are a bunch of quilts glancing all over the place. one quilt caught my eye from day 1.

It’s a beautiful quilt but there’s a problem.  It doesn’t hang straight.  Here are quilts in the same area that do not have that problem.

Can you see how not straight the quilt looks? I asked a lady who was sitting next to me why it did that and she speculated that it might have to do with the uneven density of the quilting.  It looks like it was quilted in the ditch and as a result, there are parts heavily quilted and parts hardly quilted. That makes sense to me.

Then I wondered if this could have been fixed by blocking.  I first heard about blocking in knitting and kind of heard it mentioned in quilting.  I’d never done it for either quilting or knitting.  Would blocking fix this?

Since I had no idea what blocking was I went online and did some quick research.  Based on what I read, it looks like this is the point of blocking…. helping even out a quilt that is not evenly quilted.  Apparently you throw the quilt (quilted but not bound) in the wash.  Then lay it out to dry on the floor.  Do you put something on top of it or just lay it there?  Once it is dry, trim to straighten.  Then bind it.

Did I understand blocking right?  Do you block your quilts?  Is blocking only done if you’re planning on showing your quilt or is it done for quilts I’m keeping to snuggle with?

Do you agree with the lady that the unevenness of the quilt could be because of the uneven density of the quilting.  Or do you have other theories?