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Robbin's Nest Quilting Policy

Due to the high number of quilts Robbin’s Nest has received with the following problems, we have been forced to implement the following policy. This policy will be strictly enforced. No exceptions will be made.

Customers must clip and remove stray threads. Stray threads protruding from seams can be easily caught up by the machine which will result in a tear in the quilt. The more handling a quilt top gets the more stray threads you will get from seams raveling etc.
Iron your quilt top and backing. Your quilt will get a little wrinkled in transit and storage which is normal. We will repress before quilting if it is needed. But if you don’t do this to start with we charge extra to do it for you.
Please don’t tear your fabric. We get an enormous amount of quilts where borders have been torn from yardage and not cut with a scissors or rotary cutter. The edges ravel and ravel. These threads get wrapped around and around the rollers and cause a big headache. We also don’t recommend fabric be torn because manufacturers do not have the quality control of years past and fabric will not always tear straight. We have found a vast majority of fabrics skewed to the bias, new on the bolt. Please be aware, examine your fabrics when you buy them. Discount houses sell end bolts, dye lots not consistent with the original colors produced, cheap griege goods, fabrics with grease marks, felt tip marker marks, tiny tears or holes, scorch or burn holes, you name it we’ve seen it. Bargain fabrics are not always bargains. Even the most expensive fabric has flaws! We can’t control this and neither can you.
Customers must make sure that all pins are removed from the seams. Pins have been left in the quilts and are virtually invisible (especially when pinned parallel to the seams) until the machine hits one and breaks the needle. This has resulted in damage to our quilting machine in the past. When pinning a quilt for assembly please use long quilting pins with large heads that are much easier to see. Most pins we have had left in quilt tops were tiny silver silk pins or small pins with colored heads.
Customers must inspect all quilts upon completion, front and back. If there is a problem we want to know about it before you leave. We prefer that you do not send a friend or relative to pick up your quilt. If you do not personally pick up your quilt and inspect it before it leaves the premises, we will accept no responsibility for the condition in which it arrives to you. Once it has left our care, we have absolutely no control over what happens to it between the time it leaves our hands and arrives in yours.
Customer must have backing and batting 4 inches larger than the quilt top on all 4 sides. In other words, make your batting and backing 8 inches longer and 8 inches wider than your top. Your quilt top is going to stretch. In some instances we have had tops stretch as much as 6 inches from the raw measurement. You do not want to come up short on backing and batting. We can’t stress this enough!
Rippled Borders: Most quilters try to save fabric yardage by cutting borders from the cross grain. This method guarantees that you will have more stretch in your borders than your pieced blocks. This creates a “rippled border” effect. This is beyond our control. It is further compounded by more than one border.

What can we do to remedy rippled borders? You have two choices. Remove the border and shorten it and sew it back on, or if the quilt is already on the frame and partially quilted which is the most frequent, we can either take small tucks in the border and sew them by hand as we go, or try to ease the rippling which will create some bubbling in the border quilting. What causes rippled borders? a. Cutting fabric on the cross grain. b. If you piece the border strips with a bias seam you increase the possibility of the border stretching more. c. Two or more borders. d. The most frequent cause is if your quilt is longer on one side or wider on one end than the other. 95% of the quilts we get fit this category.
Robbin’s Nest will not guarantee to center your quilt top on your quilt backing. Fabric content, and customer piecing varies greatly. The amount of stretch in a fabric is completely beyond our control. We try to be as precise as possible when it comes to centering. No matter how precise we measure, all quilts invariably stretch in all directions more than we can anticipate. Since we cannot control the stretch factor we don’t recommend that you pull the backing to the front to finish the quilt. You may not have an equal amount of backing all around the quilt to do this.
Do not piece your backing with a contrasting border to frame in a different fabric center because we cannot guarantee to center the quilt top so that an equal amount of the quilting will fall on the borders on the back. If your backing comes up short and you have to add on, use matching fabric. We highly recommend solid one piece backing. If you must piece your backing, piecing three strips of equal length across the width of the quilt works the best. Vertical seams are a nightmare to mount on the quilting table as the center seam rolls over and over itself creating a bulge in the center and pulling the sides into puckers. It is nearly impossible to roll flat.
If you piece a label into your backing, or machine embroider a signature, you must make sure that it is not going to be too close to the bottom or one side of the backing or it may not get quilted into the quilt. It should be placed higher on the backing to make sure it is included in the quilting. If you do not want the label quilted you should put it on after the quilt has been quilted.
Do not lop off the corners of your borders or scallop the edges of your quilt until you get it back from us. We need a straight edge the full length and width of your quilt top to pin to the leader cloth on our quilting table to mount for quilting and for clamping the sides. Without these parts of the quilt it is very difficult to pin your quilt top to the quilting table and creates other problems with puckering and bubbling of borders and edges. Please wait to do this after the quilt has been quilted.
We will try to quilt your quilt as pucker free as your piecing will allow. Old blocks, blocks with a lot of bias edges or pieces, blocks not all the same size that have been “eased in” and rippled borders all create a less than optimum surface to quilt by machine. Without question this means you will have some bubbling and/or puckering during the quilting process. This is beyond our control and there is nothing we can do to eliminate it. This is especially true of antique quilt tops.
If you have any problems with your quilt after you take it home, call us and let us know what it is. Do not alter your quilt in any way until you bring it back so we can examine it.

Quilting is not an exact science. Variables in piecing, 1/4” seam allowances, or blocks that aren’t exactly square, make the job of the quilter harder. We can only work the best we can with what we are provided. It is your responsibility as the customer to read this information and be aware that these variables exist and why.

Robbin’s Nest strives to do the best job we can and make a great effort to please the customer. That said, we will not be responsible for circumstances beyond our control.