Ever had a quilt that you were so disappointed in the quilting that you just folded it and put it away for years? I had a client bring in a quilt that she loved…until it was quilted. I’d never taken out a whole quilt before (it was about 50” x 50” so not a huge quilt.). But it had been long arm quilted and had several places of over stitching. Here are a few pictures of it before destitching happened.

See the excess fabric? And the design in the plate didn’t match the center or the petals. And it was quilted with yellow thread. Not what the quilted wanted. I took it and unpicked a corner of the quilt to see how hard it would be and if the holes would close up. Below are my results.

So as you can see the holes did close up pretty good, i spritzed it with water and rubbed the fabric a little with a towel. I took out the stitches from the back of the quilt so I didn’t accidentally clip the quilt top. I was pretty sure I’d have to replace the backing anyhow but I didn’t want to take off the binding right away. Met with the client and showed what I used and how I did it and gave her the option of paying me to do it (might take up to 20 hours or more), or she could do it. She chose to do it. Here are the tools I found worked good for me and now are my go to unpickers.

In the end the quilt came out flat and we did not have to take off the binding or replace the back of the quilt. I then used my Tiara 2 to do custom quilting on it. I used white thread in the background and red and blue threads in the Dresden plates. The client was overcome with happiness when she saw what I did with the quilt.