Sandwich…not food. The process of layering a quilt.

I’ve been asked many times how I sandwich my quilts?  Do I spray baste or pin? I guess this is time for a how I go from finished top to making my sandwich and quilting.  So here goes.

material that I need when sandwiching quilts are:

Table risers, Kabob sticks, tape, Large binder clips, and lots of safety pins.

First of all I like to take kabob sticks and tape an x to the center of my dining room table its the largest flat surface I have.  I used to do it on the floor but it got too hard on the back. now I find the table much easier.   I have risers that can be found at any hardware store to lift my table to a comfortable height.  This saves my back by not always bending over the table. It ends up about kitchen counter height when it’s raised.

The next step is to fold my backing wrong sides together in half length wise and again width wise, and place by the  taped sticks in the middle of the table.. The reasoning behind using sticks is that I can feel the center of the table thru all layers.  So I unfold the backing fabric and use large Binder clips to keep it stretched on the table.

Now ill do the same thing with my batting find the center and flatten on the backing and attach the binder clips to the table.

Now do the same thing with the quilt top.

Now I will pin all 3 layers that are stretched flat on the table every 3 inches.  Your going to need a lot of pins for this.  a Queen size quilt may end up with 100-300 pins.  when that’s all pined slide your quilt to get the missed edges and use the binder clips to hold everything in place. pin… repeat for all sides that are overhanging the table.

You are now ready to begin quilting your sandwich.  I hope this will help you and save your back.   Ill do a post on quilting on my domestic machine soon.