The days of same day or next day delivery are all gone at Amazon. It’s a least a week now. So when my batting and backing arrived I got very excited. I also ordered some heavy duty clamps. You’ll see them in other pictures.
I think I mentioned I decided to go with Polyester batting. Cotton is way too heavy, I know wool is lighter, but honesty, I think polyester might be even lighter than wool.
I had ordered wide fabric. 108″ by 4 yards. I ended up cutting off about half a yard and sewing that onto the fabric, giving myself plenty of backing material on all sides. Here it is laid out on the living room floor. I pinned the top and then, migrated outside to my two folding tables.
With a quilt this size there is no way I can work with spray glue. Honestly, I may go back to safety pins for all large quilts. Spray basting is great for smaller ones, like baby size or wall hanging. But wrangling two fabrics that are sticky and affixing the batting – it’s not great fun.
I got a set of four clamps. Which I think was sufficient. What I really need more of is the safety pins. While shopping for the clamps online I made sure to find some that open 4″. The sides of these plastic tables are at least 2″ wide. Good choice, yes, these were more expensive, but they worked beautifully.
Now I have a flat, relatively taut surface to pin. More pins would be better as you will see later. Yes, I know, my borders appear to have too much fabric. I measured the edges and came up with 85.5″ and made sure that was the size of each border. I pinned and sewed from the center out. It still looks like too much fabric. So yeah, I’ll have to quilt the heck out of the borders. Also, I will end up cutting off at least two inches.
Speaking of pins, I pricked myself and bled on the white background. Just this past year I learned about using hydrogen Peroxide to remove blood. I can hear many of you gasping and wondering what rock have I been living under all this time? I don’t know, but these lessons are better learned late than never.
Not enough pins.
And here is the beast, scrunched up on my quilting table. When I’m sewing, a lot more of it is on the back of the table. I can’t tell you what a huge difference this makes. It’s a beast to quilt and so far I’ve only done the walking foot in the seams. I have yet to see what it will be like doing the free-motion.
I LOVE my Juki, it is an amazing machine. Oh, and there won’t be any ruler work on this quilt…. I’m not that masochistic.
It’s hard to see, but I’m basically laying down a grid to hold everything in place. You see in the upper left hand corner, there is some extra fabric. Yeah, I had to cut some of the backing because it got too taut. The problem of not enough pins. So I released the pressure and put in a patch. Once it’s all quilted we shall see what I do. I happen to have a block left over that I didn’t use on the front, I might slap it on there.
Creating is an adventure. Finding solutions to problems along the way is part of the deal. I’m not looking for perfection, I’m looking for getting the job done as well as I can.
Leah