Wow! That's a 7.5% shrinkage. That's quite a lot. Who made it? Is the name of the maker on the selvage?

Wilmington from Hancock' s of Paducah. It is a very nice fabric. Just shrunk a lot.

Theresa

I have had that happen to the wide backing too. I wonder if it really is that wide before washing.

Yeah, that was my thought, too...that it wasn't really 108" to begin with.

I picked it up from the quilter on Wed. And worked magic yesterday.

The centre of all the log cabins is a red fabric. I had lots of that left even after making the binding. So the backing now sports two red stripes and on the med. gray looks good.

Dropped it off this morning.

Theresa

I'm so happy you were able to fix the backing. I've had 108" backing (and I did measure it first) shrink down to almost 100" too. I guess 5% shrinkage is typical. Maybe the wider the fabric, the bigger the shrinkage percentage. I don't know why that would be, but maybe it is. I'm sure it looks just great with the stripes.

That's a lot of shrinkage! Another thing you have to watch out for is when the wide fabric is cut at the fabric store. Because it is folded twice onto the bolt the fabric might be crooked, you can lose a whole lot of usable fabric when they cut it. I lost nearly a half yard when I squared up a backing. I almost had to piece part of the side onto the top or bottom and I really didn't want to do that. I wish they would tear those wide pieces. When I tore the fabric to square it up, I ended up with two very long wedges of fabric that were an inch wide at one end and 6 to 8 inches wide at the other end, long triangles of unusable fabric.

Good save on the stripes!

bk

Theresa, I'm glad you had enough extra fabric to fix your backing!

I've also had the wide fabric cut very crookedly on the ends. Fabric that wide is just plain hard to handle! Though it is very useful at times. I've used it for backing on Bonnie Hunter mystery quilts, because the top has so many seams going all directions. I figure the fewer seams on the back, the better. :)

Donna

I have had the same experience with squaring up the large backing . I usually buy a little extra just in case that happens.