Quilting a large piece....have ??

Hi, I've been lurking trying to learn from you and I sure have! New to this fabulous craft but suspect it's going to get waaaay out of hand. Am already thinking about room additions to hold everything. Anyway, I'd really like to tackle something big someday and the biggest obstacle I see to this is where do I do the process of sandwiching the quilt so that it is nice and smooth when I go to do the actual quilting? I mean, like what do you do when the quilt is larger than any table you have to lay it out on? I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say there is no way I can get down on the floor to work on it --- I'd never be able to get back up! LOL, but true. Do you put a bunch of folding tables together? Buy a ping pong table which is still probably too narrow for a king size spread? Rent a hall? I really want to be able to do this myself and not have to hire it out. Is there a way to sandwich the quilt in parts, like do one side and have the other side rolled up? Will that work? Gosh, I've looked at many different sites and I can't come up with an answer. Hope some of you can give me some ideas. Am just finishing up a beginner lap quilt class and really enjoy this!

Kathy in Michigan

Reply to
KT in Mich
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Kathy, I've sandwiched mine on the dining room table, but it's kind of cumbersome. If you can find someplace - like a church or Legion hall or someplace like that - where you can put tables together and then lay it out, that would be ideal. If your LQS has a classroom with tables, they might let you put them together and sandwich it there.

I wouldn't recommend sandwiching the quilt in parts - there's too much opportunity for the various parts to shift, and you'd end up with a wonky quilt or some pleats where you don't want them!

Now, welcome to the group! It sounds like you're already hooked if you're starting to think ahead to your next project! I hope you'll take some time to tell us a little about yourself - do you have any QIs (pets)? What kind of chocolate do you like (and be warned that you'll be asked to send some to Pat for testing!)? Kids? Spouse? What is your lap quilt like?

Reply to
Louise in Iowa

I can sandwich a king sized quilt on a small table- no problem. Start in the middle and shift it back and forth working out from the middle in a spiral. You'll need to use big black binder clips to hold the backing in place and smooth... smooth... smooth as you pin or baste. When you have the first area all pinned or basted then shift the whole thing over to one side (following the spiral idea as you shift it, too) clip the backing to the table again and start with the smoothing and pinning/basting again.

But an even better idea is to quilt it in sections! That way you are not pinning/basting a really big area and it's more manageable to quilt whether by hand or machine. I usually make four sections of a bed sized quilt.

Good luck, have fun and welcome to the ng!

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

Reply to
Leslie& The Furbabies in MO.

How I baste quilts is that I have an 8 foot banquet table (one of those newer, lightweight plastic ones which lives behind the couch in the basement when I am not using it) and a set of bed risers. The table gets placed on the bed risers with good visibility of the TV for me.

Then I start with one end of the quilt sandwich lined up and taped on the table, the other parts attached by some big binder clips (and I take advantage of gravity to keep things straight) and put in the safety pins. After I peek underneath to be sure there are no wrinkles, I close the pins and move the sandwich so that another part hangs off the table.

Lather, rinse, repeat as needed.

Other people have other strategies. Hopefully, they will tell you about them. Before I got this equipment, I used an empty classroom at church (also with the long tables) and borrowed some pieces of PVC from my guild to raise them. I am tall enough to be able to reach the center when two tables are put together and raised, not everyone is.

Good luck!

Mary

"KT >Hi, I've been lurking trying to learn from you and I sure have! New to this

Reply to
Mary in Rock Island IL

I'm glad to hear you were able to pin/base just a portion of the quilt and then go back and do more of it. I was too afraid to try it - afraid of what might happen as far as keeping it smooth on the back. I'm glad to know it can be done, though!

Reply to
Louise in Iowa

Hey KT of Michigan

I'm Kate T. of South Mississippi. So your finishing up your first lap quilt. and now want to do a "big" quilt. Well how about talking to the local Senior Citizen Center. They usually have a quilting group and will help you sandwich your creation. The Senior Center might charge you a small fee and you might be able to join their quilting bee. This is a hands on craft and learning from those with plenty of experience is invaluable. So pull up a chair to this electronic quilt frame and join in. Your dues are chocolate in any form such as fudge, cake, candy, muffins, you get the idea. And we need to know about your QIs (pets), your significant other, children and what colors your favor. So Welcome, you'll learn lots here.

Kate T. South Mississippi

Reply to
Kate T.

NO! I do not do a portion and go back. I do the entire thing just shifting it around and clamping it to the table as I go. (I have several health issues and cannot imagine doing it on a huge table/tables and all the bending and reaching towards the middle.) I would have great concerns about doing it piecemeal. Please don't try it and have a big mess that will ruin your joy in quilting.....

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

Reply to
Leslie& The Furbabies in MO.

Oh! I get it! I misinterpreted what you were saying. I thought you were quilting it in sections, too, rather than basting/pinning in sections. I guess I was more tired than I thought when I was reading last night.

Reply to
Louise in Iowa

I use a system that involves long 1-1'2" x 1-1/2" oak rails that are of varying length that are appropriate to the size of the quilt I am making. They are clamped together on the 4 corners, and on 2 of the rails there is attached a piece of fabric that I secure to the head and foot of the quilt back with safety pins. This whole apparatus sits atop some plywood that rests on the dining room table. I stretch the backing fabric out so that there are no wrinkles in it, but not too tight. I use spring clamps along the sides of the rails to make the whole back as secure and evenly stretched as possible. This process requires the back to be of a size that is a bit larger than the finished size of the quilt to allow for the clamping and pining of the edges. Then I use spray adhesive on the back and place the batting on it and smooth it out. More spray adhesive, and then place the top onto the batting thereby creating the sandwich. Some people don't like to use the spray adhesive, and that could be eliminated if you are of that persuasion. Then I use safety pins to hold the whole shebang together, pinned about 4"-6" or as the pattern dictates, and when that is done, it is ready to quilt. If you are doing hand quilting. you would probably use basting stitching instead of safety pins, which would allow you to hoop it for stitching and not be bothered by the safety pins. I have never had any problem with wrinkles in the back using this method, and find that the results are never stretched out of shape as a result. It does require a large table for the base to support the rails, but you could use a bare floor if you didn't mind being down on your knees. My back would not allow that method, so the table is a good height for me to maintain a semblance of comfort while pining the sandwich together. Everything mentioned above comes apart and is put away in storage, until needed again. John

Reply to
John

John, please could you take and post pics of your sandwiching process the next time you use it

Thanks

Karen

"John" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@k17g2000yqb.googlegroups.com... On Mar 25, 10:19 pm, "KT in Mich" wrote:

I use a system that involves long 1-1'2" x 1-1/2" oak rails that are of varying length that are appropriate to the size of the quilt I am making. They are clamped together on the 4 corners, and on 2 of the rails there is attached a piece of fabric that I secure to the head and foot of the quilt back with safety pins. This whole apparatus sits atop some plywood that rests on the dining room table. I stretch the backing fabric out so that there are no wrinkles in it, but not too tight. I use spring clamps along the sides of the rails to make the whole back as secure and evenly stretched as possible. This process requires the back to be of a size that is a bit larger than the finished size of the quilt to allow for the clamping and pining of the edges. Then I use spray adhesive on the back and place the batting on it and smooth it out. More spray adhesive, and then place the top onto the batting thereby creating the sandwich. Some people don't like to use the spray adhesive, and that could be eliminated if you are of that persuasion. Then I use safety pins to hold the whole shebang together, pinned about 4"-6" or as the pattern dictates, and when that is done, it is ready to quilt. If you are doing hand quilting. you would probably use basting stitching instead of safety pins, which would allow you to hoop it for stitching and not be bothered by the safety pins. I have never had any problem with wrinkles in the back using this method, and find that the results are never stretched out of shape as a result. It does require a large table for the base to support the rails, but you could use a bare floor if you didn't mind being down on your knees. My back would not allow that method, so the table is a good height for me to maintain a semblance of comfort while pining the sandwich together. Everything mentioned above comes apart and is put away in storage, until needed again. John

Reply to
one of the Nussbaums

Everything you suggest will work :-) Just don't even think about crawling around on the floor unless you really have no other option!

I have an old d>Hi, I've been lurking trying to learn from you and I sure have! New to this

Reply to
Roberta

Welcome, Kathy. Nice to have you with us. I hope you've been paying careful attention to the wise ones who've been trying to guide you. Roberta just slipped in some important words: smooth but not stretched. One time (and only one time) I pulled a backing and batting too tightly. Quilting it was a battle from the first stitch to the last. Polly

"Roberta" Everything you suggest will work :-) Just don't even think about

Reply to
Polly Esther

I use my dining room table and baste in sections, as others have described. Some quilts lend themselves well to quilting in sections. I did one large quilt in sections; I documented it step-by-step here .

Julia > Hi, I've been lurking trying to learn from you and I sure have! New to

Reply to
Julia in MN

Okay- now I'm getting confused, too. LOL I quilt in sections for large quilts. I assemble the quilt top in sections- usually 4 for a bed sized quilt and then other times the top may want fewer or more sections. Then I sandwich and pin baste *each section* in it's entirety, completely quilt each of the sections and then join the quilted sections with a little flap of fabric to stitch down (by hand) over the seam allowances. So, I do quilt in sections but each section is completely basted before I start the quilting.

Clear as mud? ;-)

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

Reply to
Leslie& The Furbabies in MO.

Now I really get it! It's even clearer than mud. Actually, it makes a lot of sense - many people talk about how cumbersome it is to maneuver a bed-size quilt while quilting on their machine, and this is a great solution. I'm just sorry it took me so long to visualize it and understand what you were doing!

How's the moving process going? When does the move actually take place?

Reply to
Louise in Iowa

O my gosh! I never expected to hear from so many of you, and what great ideas and help you've been! I'm saving all of these messages so that when I do attempt (soon) a large project I'll know how to attack the sandwiching process. Now, about me: I am so very happily single (for about 40 years now). I have a dau that lives next door to me separated by about 200 feet of pine trees which gives us the privacy we both want. I have a son who lives in WI, not far from Beaver Dam. There are 3 grandchildren, one in her last yr of college, and the 2 boys are 14 yrs old. I have the most wonderful dog. Tootsie (Toots) is a Bichon and I just love her so much! Why do you call pets QI??? Quilting Interrupters???? Dark chocolate is my passion along with ice cream (chocolate fudge brownie when I can find it) but I seldom have either anymore because my diabetes numbers got out of whack. But I've found I really do like the sugar-free Jello puddings in the refrig section of the grocery. The chocolate flavors are pretty good -- when you don't think about the "real" thing too much. I'm originally from the Detroit area but moved to northern Michigan (at the tip of the "baby" finger) 8 years ago when I retired. Besides this new quilting obsession, I've been doing cross-stitch for about 15 years, currently working on Van Gogh's "Starry Night" which is a chart I got from Scarlet Quince on line. Almost 2 years in the process, I'm about 6 months to finish I think. Work on it every nite in front of the TV. Also have been doing genealogy for about 30 years. Love to read: Nora Roberts, JD Robb, LuAnn Rice, Koontz, King, Maeve Binchy, others of that sort. Am the neighborhood PC guru; been PC computing since the mid-80s and Apple before that. Are you bored yet??? Like country music, hamburgers, and the beautiful blue skies and clear nites with millions of stars that we see up here in the country. This beginner quilt is 25 6-inch blocks of 4-patch, 9-patch, flying geese, log cabin, rails, etc. I'm doing it in 3 shades of blues, 3 shades of greens, and 4 shades of brown/tans. I'm very monochromatic and am scared to death of color and prints. But my very helpful quilt shop is getting me braver by the minute. Am finshed making the squares and next week our class will be starting the borders and assembly process.

When you say "clamp" it, do you mean clamp it to the edge of the table? To hold it in one place? So if you do sandwich in sections, you have to unclamp, smooth and reclamp each time? I'm going to ask our library if I can use their folding tables during the week when no one is in their meeting room. Great idea. Where do you get the "bed risers"???? That sounds like a great idea! John's idea of the frame is great and I'd like to see photos of it too. I had an idea of getting some light weight boards at the lumber store and getting my son-in-law to put hinges or something to hold them together, on the bottom to connect them and then just putting the whole thing over my smaller tabletop. Not sure this would work? It would probably need better support on the edges? Maybe a ping pong table after all? But if I do find/get a larger table, how do you shorties like me get to the center to pin???? There is no way I can crawl on top of a table! Julia, thanks for sending the link to your quilting in sections. I will study it.

Thanks so much for welcoming me to your group. I probably won't have too much to offer but I will contribute whereever I can. I'm going to have tons more questions for sure! You are sure a friendly group!

Kathy KT in MI

Reply to
KT in Mich

Welcome, KT! yes, we are a wiley bunch, but great gals and guys all around. Can't wait to see pictures of your work.

John...I, too, would like a pictorial of your process.

amy in CNY

Reply to
amy in CNY

I got my bed risers at Bed, Bath and Beyond. They are probably available at lots of other places as well.

Mary

Reply to
Mary in Rock Island IL

Thanks! I went on line and found some! Kathy in MI

Reply to
KT in Mich

Kathy, You should take a look at Marti Mitchell's book: "Machine Quilting in Sections".

might give you a heads up.

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amy in CNY

Reply to
amy in CNY

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