Stencils for Long Arm Quilting, Part Three: None of the Magic Tricks Are Working

If you've been following along with me recently, you know that I've been experimenting with the use of homemade stencils and chalk powder to transfer quilting designs onto my Spirit Song quilt.  My DIY stencils are made of 24 pound vellum paper that I've stitched through with an unthreaded domestic sewing machine to perforate the design lines, and since I've already completed all of the SID (stitch in the ditch) quilting on this quilt, it's already loaded onto my long arm frame.  In case you're wondering, there is absolutely no way you could use chalk powder to mark an entire quilt PRIOR to loading it on the frame, because the chalk powder is just resting on the surface of the quilt and if you touch it, move the fabric after marking it, or even breathe on it, it's gone.

Such a Quick Method of Transferring a Design!

Here's what I'm finding: When you see these stencils and powdered marking chalk products demonstrated at quilt shows or in online videos, they are usually demonstrating these products on a single piece of fabric that is laying on a table top.  Transferring a stencil design with chalk powder works much better against a flat surface, and I could not consistently achieve a clean, full design transfer unless I had some kind of flat surface pressing up against the bottom of my quilt.  With smaller stencils, I had good results transferring the stencil design with my machine head positioned so that I could support my quilt with the ruler base while transferring the design, but if I was trying to transfer a large design, like a border pattern, I would need to rig something up beneath my frame in order to get a clean transfer of the entire design.

White Zinc Stearate Magic Chalk on Left (Orange) and Pounce Chalk in Blue on right (Yellow)

However, that may be a moot point.  I have now tried both the original white Pounce Chalk product, the blue Pounce Chalk product, and the zinc stearate Magic Chalk that is supposed to stick to your quilt better than the Pounce Chalk product, removing with steam.  [I didn't have a separate pounce pad for the blue chalk, just a bag of the chalk powder to try, which is why I'm applying that chalk with a foam paint brush in the photo above].  You guys, I saw ZERO difference between these products.  If anything, the chalk powders that were supposed to stick better and were supposed to be MORE difficult to remove actually stuck to my quilt surface not at ALL and disappeared even faster!

80% of Magic Chalk Bounced Off As Soon as I Began Stitching

When you are trying to follow a design line that you've carefully marked on your quilt and it's vanishing before you can stitch it, it's very frustrating!  

The Blue Pounce Chalk That's Supposed to be Harder to Remove

I thought for sure the blue Pounce Chalk would stick to my quilt long enough for me to quilt the design, because a few quilters had warned me that they still had some of that blue pigment remaining in their finished quilts that they couldn't remove once the quilting was finished.  I am absolutely mystified by that.  In the photo above, the periwinkle chalk dust is the blue Pounce Chalk that bounced right off my quilt, completely removing itself as soon as I started stitching, and the couple of places where you see more of a teal line are spots where I filled in the incomplete stenciled design with my blue washaway marker.  All of the chalk disappeared the instant I began stitching, and only the marker lines remained.

This Time, I Wet My Fabric Patch Before Applying the Stencil with Chalk Powder

One tip that I'd read about was to mist the surface of your quilt with water before applying the stencil with chalk powder, to make it "grab" the chalk and hold onto it long enough for you to quilt the design.  Well, I can't spray water all over my quilt because I'm also using the blue water soluble marker to mark my ruler work lines and I don't want those lines disappearing on me.  But I did saturate a scrap of cotton batting with water and pressed that into my fabric patch to wet it prior to applying a chalk stencil.  Did this make any difference, though?  Nope!

Still Pretty Hard to See Once I Start Stitching

Theories as to why these products and tips may be working better for other quilters than they are for me:

1. Is there a difference in the amount of vibration between different quilting machines?  Is my APQS Millennium just "bouncier" than Jamie Wallen's HandiQuilter or someone else's domestic sewing machine that they are quilting with?

2. By the time a quilt top is loaded onto my frame, it has been HEAVILY starched.  I starched every seam of every block throughout construction, because starch helps me achieve a flat, square quilt top with nice, crisp points throughout.  But maybe the quilters who are using stencils with powdered chalk to mark their quilts are not starch fanatics like I am.  If we were to compare a heavily starched piece of cotton fabric to an unstarched piece of cotton fabric under a microscope, I'll bet the unstarched fabric has a rougher surface texture that the chalk powder is able to settle into, especially into those tiny holes in between the warp and weft yarns.  My starch has probably filled in those holes and smoothed any microscopic yarn slubs that the chalk powder could have grabbed onto, giving me a nonstick quilt surface kind of like Teflon in a frying pan.

All Stitched Out

I don't know -- now that I'm looking at these photos of the yellow triangle that I dampened with water before stenciling, maybe the chalk DID stay on better during stitching?  That would actually make sense, because wetting the starched fabric makes the layer of starch a little bit tacky to "grab" the chalk.  Maybe I was just having trouble seeing my little white chalk dots against this particular fabric that has such a profusion of dots and splotches all over the place.  Maybe I'll try wetting the fabric before stenciling again on a couple of different fabric patches with the different chalks before giving up and moving on.

These Look Better Than the Ones I Quilted Two Days Ago

One thing I can tell you is that I'm already seeing improvement from the first couple of times I quilted this motif to the ones I quilted last night.  My curls are more consistent on both sides of each triangle, the curly ends are more rounded, and the echo spacing of the curls is more even.  Also, in the places where the stitching IS a little wonky, my blending Peach Tart So Fine 50 weight thread is camouflaging the oopses nicely.

The First Two Attempts at Quilting This Motif

I don't know how obvious this is to other people comparing these photos, but in the one above there were several places where I lost control for a moment and a line that I intended to be smooth twisted away, or a line that I meant to echo back on a curl was super thick in some places and then super thin in others.  It should be interesting to compare these first attempts to the last ones that I will quilt when I get to the bottom of the quilt.

Still Not Great, But Better Than the First One!

In the photo above, the yellow and pink fabric patch is still wet -- that's why you see the seam allowance shadowing through so badly.  It will look fine when it's completely dry.

Still Wet.  From a Distance, Can't Really See Anything Anyway

You know, these crazy prints and my blending thread do a great job of hiding the skips and bobbles, but they also make it hard to see what I'm quilting WHILE I'm quilting it.  It might be better to plan the next quilt so I'm doing these designs on fabric that will show the quilting more distinctly.

Super Bad Tension MUST Come Out!

I also ripped out and requilted some of the bad eyelash stitching that I showed you last time.  A couple of you advised me to leave those stitches in because "no one will ever know," but I know better from experience!  If your tension is off so badly that you have eyelashes on the back of your quilt as shown in the photo above, it's not just an aesthetic issue.  That bobbin thread is just floating against the backing fabric, barely attached with long loops of top thread that were pulled clear through to the back of the quilt.  When you wash that quilt for the first time and it shrinks -- and yes, it WILL shrink, even if you preshrunk all of your fabrics -- you end up with loose thread all over the back of the quilt that will catch and snag and rip right out of the quilt.  Tension that bad is just not "structurally sound."  What's more, these stitches are faster and easier to remove than nice, balanced stitches that lock together within the batting layer of the quilt.  You just clip the beginning and end of the flat stitching line from the back of the quilt, grab the bobbin thread with your tweezers, and the whole line of stitching slides right out in one piece.  Hideous tension stitches are the only quilting stitches that come out faster than they were sewn.

So, where does that leave us?  I think I have some more lousy tension to rip out and restitch before advancing the quilt.  It's hard to tell for sure until I roll that bit up onto the pickup roller of the frame, because I get vertigo when I keep crawling under the frame and trying to look up to evaluate the stitching.  Now I'm wishing that I'd taken the time to attach the zipper leaders to my canvas leaders (I've had them for three years, still in the package), because it would be so much easier to unzip the top edge of this quilt from the pickup roller, flip the quilt backside up to locate and remove the bad stitches, and then zip that edge right back onto the frame to resume quilting.  Woulda, shoulda, coulda!  I can't attach zipper leaders while I've got a quilt loaded on the frame, though, so I'm just going to have to keep rolling the quilt back and forth to rip and restitch one yucky bit at a time.

Happy Thursday, all of you.  I hope you get some time in your sewing rooms today!

Ta-Da! Triangles On My Design Wall!

The past few days have been busy, so I'm pleased to report that I've made some paltry progress on my new Tabby Mountain quilt.  

Triangles!

There are more triangles on my cutting table, along with a stack of other fabrics waiting to  be cut up.

More Triangles Ready For the Wall

I know this might not look like much to show for myself, but it's not like I've been holed up in my sewing room for the past five days; I've been busy as usual with other things.  Since my last post on Friday, I've sung at three church services plus four and a half hours of rehearsals, baked a chocolate peppermint fudge Bundt cake to bring to a post-Christmas choir party that I attended with my husband: 

I Should Have Left Out the Peppermint Extract.  It Tasted Like Chocolate Toothpaste Cake.

...Cooked chicken soup from scratch (with my first-ever attempt at Matzo balls!) and delivered it to a sick friend (that soup was delicious, but alas, I forgot to get a picture for you guys).  I also managed to fit in three hours of exercise, a book study, and two doctor appointments.  All since Friday, and all in my so-called "free time" -- I'm not even listing any of the time I spent on activities pertaining to work, housekeeping, or parenting.  So although my progress may look pitiful to some, I am delighted to see those triangles slowly but steadily multiplying on the design wall.  Sewing them together will probably go faster than cutting them out, don't you think?

I prewashed my fabrics so one thing slowing down my cutting is that I have to press and starch each piece of fabric before I start cutting into it.  I'm a fervent believer in starch for precision piecing anyway, but I knew I wanted to start out with starched fabric for this project in particular to control the tendency of all of those long bias edges to want to stretch.  

My Ancient Chinese Secret: Spray Starch

Cutting the solid fabrics and a couple of the prints goes faster than cutting out stripes, directional prints, and kitty cats.  The Tabby Road print is my favorite fabric in the collection, so I'm cutting those triangles one at a time and trying to get one kitty cat in each triangle.  

Fussy-Cutting My Kitty Cats

Of course I want my stripes perfectly straight, directional prints right side up instead of sideways, and prints like the rows of cat food need to be cut straight as well.  

Fabric Edge Is Torn, Print Is Slightly Off Grain

As you can see in the photo above, despite the bottom edge of the fabric being torn so I know it's perfectly on grain, the rows of cat food cans are actually printed onto the fabric slightly crooked.  I want my Cat Snacks to be right side up and nice and straight on my quilt, so I cut my 10" strip parallel to the rows of cans.

Cutting First Pair of 30 Degree Triangles from Double Layer of Cat Snacks Fabric

...And, as you can see in this photo, there isn't a lot of room for error when cutting triangles from these FQ (fat quarter) prints.  I need four triangles from each FQ, and once I've straightened my fabric edge up and cut a 10" strip, I barely have enough to get those four triangles out of it.  Yes, I'm accumulating large fabric scraps of each print for another project, but there are no scraps large enough to cut out another 10" 30 degree triangle if I was to mess one up.

Cutting Second Pair of Triangles From The Same FQ Strip

See what I mean about not much room for error?  I'd rather cut up these luscious prints slowly and carefully than fast and recklessly.  Speed isn't worth what you lose in accuracy, or the finger you sliced off with your rotary cutter, slicing through fabric left and right like a crazy person.  

Future Triangles Waiting in the Wings: Needing to be Starched, Pressed, and Chopped Up

I am really loving working with these saturated colors and fun prints, I can tell you that.  It's like a feast for my eyeballs, calorie-free and everything, which is perfect for January!

Anyway, this was just supposed to be a "quick" post, so I'm signing off now.  I'm linking up with:

• ·       Let’s Bee Social at www.sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/
• ·       Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/
• ·       WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com
• ·       WIPs With Friends at www.mamaspark.blogspot.com

Paper Pieced Pineapple Block #19: A Change of Shoes and Settings

Block #19 of 36

I tried doing a few things differently with block #19 of my Pineapple Log Cabin.  I'm continuing to starch my fabric strips before sewing them to my block, and that seems to have solved the issue I was having where longer strips were not staying completely open while adjacent strips were attached to them.  I didn't starch my fabric before cutting it because starch invites bugs and not all of the fabric is going to make it into this quilt.  Instead, I starch my strips after I cut them to length, just before sewing them to the block.

Starch Keeps Block Nice and Flat During Construction

I'm using Faultless Heavy Spray Starch.  I like Mary Ellen's Best Press for prepared applique, but for starching throughout block construction I prefer the very fine mist of a conventional spray starch product.

I have also devised a method of sorts for staying organized while constructing these blocks.  With the first few blocks, I selected fabrics one at a time, but now I am laying out combinations of two and three fabric rings at once, cutting them to the appropriate length, and then taking them all to the machine, stacked in the order to be sewn.  I still have to get up after sewing four corner strips or four side strips, to trim and press the seams open, but it feels like the sewing goes faster when I don't have to stop and make fabric decisions as frequently.

Fabric Strips Waiting to be Sewn

I like to pile my waiting fabric strips right on top of my sewing machine, where they are in easy reach.

Another change I made with this block was to try a different presser foot.  I had been using the open embroidery presser foot #20D because it gives great visibility. 

Paper Piecing with Open Embroidery Foot #20D

However, all I'm sewing is straight lines that are printed on my foundation paper.  I switched "shoes" on my sewing machine to foot #37D, Bernina's 1/4" patchwork foot (predecessor to the newer foot #97D) and I liked it better.

Paper Piecing with Patchwork Foot #37D

See how there is still plenty of visibility of the needle, but the narrower opening at the front of the presser foot "frames" the stitching line better?  That helps me to sew perfectly straight along the lines even when I get to sewing pretty briskly, because my eye can watch that the line is centered between the toes of the presser foot IN FRONT OF the needle.  With foot #20, the presser foot toes are just too far apart to gauge whether the line is perfectly centered, so I have to watch the needle instead.  I do love and prefer foot #97D for traditional patchwork, but for paper piecing I wanted a foot that was perfectly symmetrical to help me stay right on the lines. 

The other thing I did differently with this block is that instead of sewing beyond the seam lines so that adjacent seams interest, I'm only stitching my strips on the actual printed lines and securing each seam at beginning and end so they don't pull out.  My books on paper piecing say to do it the other way, starting and ending each seam just beyond the printed line, but with the thicker copy paper I used for my block foundations it just isn't as easy to tear those little seam extensions free from the paper so that I can fold it back along the next seam line.  When I try to tear the paper around those extra stitches, they usually get pulled out anyway -- so now I'm doing it the way I would do if I was hand piecing or if I was sewing a Y-Seam.  I was already using the auto thread trimmer on my Bernina 750 QE at the ends of my seams with this project, so I went into my machine settings and activated the feature that makes the machine automatically tie off when using the thread trimmer AND automatically secure at the beginning of the next seam after using the auto thread trimmer.  When I first got my machine it was set to do that by default and I thought it was the stupidest thing ever, but it's EXACTLY what I want my machine to do in this situation.  Now I can sew like I'm brain dead with no worries of forgetting to secure any of my seams and having them pull out later when I remove my paper foundations.  It is nice to have these options available, once you learn how to turn them off and on as needed!

Here's what the completed block looked like before I trimmed it:

Completed Block, Ready to Trim

I'm trimming these blocks upside-down, aligning the 1/4" line on my ruler with the STITCHING LINE on my block rather than aligning the straight edge of the ruler against the printed cutting line at the outside of the block. 

Trimming Up

Ruler Lines Matched on Horizontal and Vertical Seam Lines

If my 1/4" line is lined up with the stitching line along the vertical edge I'm trimming, as well as with the horizontal seamlines, I know I'm going to end up with square, identical blocks that fit together properly.  Or at least, that's the idea...  ;-)

On the Wall Today

So here's my design wall as of today.  I'm still working on the FrankenWhiggesh Rose applique in odd moments here and there.  Now that I've finished the 19th pineapple block, I think I'll go back to the Math Is Beautiful baby quilt on the right and get that finished up.  It was meant to be a "quick and easy" project so I could have the satisfaction of a finish in the midst of all of my long term projects, but then when I got the top sewn together I wasn't excited about it (because it was TOO quick and TOO easy).  However, I signed up for Amy Johnson's Craftsy class, Quilting With Rulers On a Home Machine, and I'm looking forward to learning and experimenting with my Westalee ruler foot and quilting rulers.  A quick and easy quilt top that doesn't really excite me is the perfect first project for testing out new techniques, don't you think?

I'm linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times, Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt, Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts, Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story, Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, and WIPs on Wednesday at Esther's Blog.  Have a great week, everyone!

For the Love of Starch: Jingle Pieced Block 7 Completed!

Jingle BOM Pieced Block No. 7

Good morning, and Happy December!  I hope everyone had a safe and relaxing Thanksgiving break with family and friends.  Our turkey was delicious, but after eating leftovers for four days in a row I really don't miss it now that it's gone.  Now, the pumpkin pies my mom baked are another story altogether -- I could eat that pumpkin pie every day for breakfast and never get tired of it.

We made a start with Christmas decorating on Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday afternoon Anders went to Grammy's house for oil painting and cookie baking and Lars and I headed up to the sewing room.  Lars is pretty self-sufficient with his cross stitch project now, so I was able to work on Pieced Block No. 7 for my Jingle BOM project. 

I did have some setbacks with this block.  First of all, Erin Russek's pattern instructions are for traditional cutting methods where you cut out a square of a certain size and then cut it diagonally once (for half-square triangles or HSTs) or twice (for quarter-square triangles or QSTs).  I wanted to use my specialty rulers instead, which allow me to quickly and accurately cut these triangles from strips of fabric instead of first cutting squares -- but you have to know what size to make your strips first.  I cut my red poinsettia triangles too small the first time and had to recut them from wider strips.  But my biggest challenge with this block was figuring out how to cut those outer corner triangles accurately.  The directions called for making them as HSTs, but I wanted to fussy-cut them from a medallion motif on my fabric.  I cut my triangles way too small the first time, and worried that maybe the corner triangles were the right size and the rest of the block was all screwed up, but I finally figured it out.



Jingle BOM Pieced Block No. 7

Oh, and the spray starch!  Harriet Hargrave recommends starching each and every piecing seam throughout the construction of every block.  I grew up in the Age of Permanent Press Fabrics, and I didn't even own any starch until I bought some to prep applique shapes.  I tried starching my seams for the first time on this block and I am officially in love.  Not only did the starch get my seams to lay flatter once I'd pressed them open (and STAY flat as additional pieces were sewn onto the block), but I had a lot less trouble with bias edges of triangles stretching and distorting when everything was crisply starched.  My block finished at 9 1/2", just as it is supposed to, and my triangle points are as good as I can get them.  As the Pretty Woman once said, "Color me happy!"

I sewed this block on my Big 'Nina, the Bernina 750 QE, with foot #37D and Dual Feed engaged, Aurifil 50/2 thread, and a size 70 Microtex needle, stitch length 2.0.  (That's for my own benefit -- I often forget what worked for me last time and it's nice to be able to look back through my blog and find that information).

My husband says I need to finish decorating my Christmas trees so he can take the boxes out of the house today, and it's either laundry today or naked family tomorrow...  ;-)  I'm not sure whether I'll make it back into my sewing room before tomorrow, but here's what I'm cooking up for the next block so far:

Next Up: Jingle Pieced Block No. 6

Picking out fabrics is my favorite part!  Incidentally, the motif I'm centering in the red star for Block 6 is the same one I broke apart for my corner triangles on Block 7.

Have a wonderful Monday, everyone!  I'm linking up with Design Wall Monday on Judy's blog, Patchwork Times.  Pop over there to be inspired by what others are working on today.

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Basting?

The First Pins are In!

After procrastinating and worrying about it all week long, I finally got the Drunken Dragons quilt layered yesterday and began pin basting.  There are only 9 pins in the quilt so far, and about 500 to go, but at least it's a start!

I had difficulties with the ironing and starching of the quilt top and backing, which I was doing on a regular ironing board with Niagara spray starch and lots of steam.  I am a child of the Permanent Press generation, and I have no experience with starch.  No, scratch that -- I once attempted to launder and starch my husband's dress shirts, and he asked me never to do so again because people would make fun of him if he went to work looking like that.  So I ended up creating all kinds of distortion and stretching with my bungled pressing and starching process, and my mom came to the rescue and helped me get everything nice and flat again afterwards.  I think the problem was that the weight of the quilt top was pulling and stretching around the tapered end of the ironing board, because I had a series of "bubbles" at regular intervals going down the center of the quilt top and backing, each bubble uniformly the size and shape of the ironing board tip.  Maybe I shouldn't have used steam?  Maybe I was using too much starch at once, getting everything too wet before pressing?  Ideally, I think that job would have gone better on a larger rectangular surface, like if I wrapped the top of my cutting table with heat proof padding like a drapery workroom table.  Next time!

Backing Centered and Clamped, Wrong Side Up

So, once I had the quilt top and backing all flat and square again, the next step was to layer the backing, batting, and quilt top, and secure the layers together with safety pins in preparation for machine quilting.  I was really dreading this step from past experience and less-than-perfect results, so I did some research into how other quilters approach layering and basting for their quilts.  Some people will tape the backing down on a clean, smooth floor and crawl around on their hands and knees to do the basting, but with a quilt as big as mine I'd have to crawl ON the quilt to get to the middle, which would definitely cause shifting, not to mention back and knee pain.  Others recommend doing it on a raised table, in sections, which is what I've done before, and what I am doing this time.  The first thing you do is center your backing wrong side up on your table, smoooth it flat, and clamp it in place with binder clips from an office supply store.  Last time I did this, I was following directions that instructed me to "stretch" the backing until it was "taut" as I clamped it down, and I stretched it so tightly that, when the clamps were released, the backing pulled back immediately, creating reverse distortion.  That's probably a contributing factor to the little pleats and tucks I see here and there on the back of Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors.  So, this time, I followed the advice of Diane Gaudynski and Harriet Hargrave and used starch for the first time on the quilt top and backing with the final pressing, and instead of stretching the backing within an inch of its life, I just smoothed it out enough that I didn't get ripples when I ran my hand over the fabric.  Hopefully I'll get better results this time.

A word about my table: My cutting table is about 30" tall, with a 72" x 54" surface.  Bigger is not better, in this case.  I want my husband to rebuild it so it's only 36" wide, because I'm having to reach too much to get at the center of the table.  It is also taking up too much real estate in my studio, which I'm planning to completely reconfigure this summer for a more workable floorplan that can accommodate a desk with a computer near my sewing machine.  I find I'm using the computer more and more in my sewing, not just with the embroidery software, but to access online manuals, sewing blogs, tutorials, etc.  I also like to set one of the boys up in my room sometimes when they have a school project to work on that requires a lot of concentration, and a little computer desk would be perfect for that as well.

Batting Smoothed in Place Over Backing Fabric

Back to the project at hand!  Once the backing was centered and secured with clamps, I smoothed out my batting on top.  I ordered 3 1/4 yards of 96" wide Hobbs Tuscany Collection Silk Batting, so the length is almost the same as I cut my backing fabric but the batting is about 20" wider.  For layering purposes, it would have been easier to fold the batting in half twice and center it on the table, like I did the backing, but then I'd be cutting 10" strips off each side of the quilt.  This batting isn't cheap, so I lined up one edge with the edge of the backing fabric and all the excess batting is hanging off the back of the table, to be trimmed off once basting is completed.  That way I'll have a 20" wide strip of leftover batting that can be used for table runners, placemats, or other small projects.  I suppose I could have cut the excess 20" off first and then centered the batting over the backing fabric, but I heard a small voice of irrational fear whispering, "what if you accidentally cut off too much?" 

By the way, why am I using silk batting?  I have wanted to try silk batting ever since I took a hand quilting class with Dierdra McElroy of Roxanne International several years ago.  She passed around a hand quilted sample with silk batting, and it was just the snuggliest, softest, lightest thing you could imagine.  Wendy Sheppard raves about how well this particular silk batting does for machine quilting, remaining soft and drapable no matter how densely she quilts it, so I decided to give it a try.  The manufacturer says to expect approximately 5% shrinkage with this batting.  It's actually a 90/10 silk/poly blend that can be quilted up to 3 1/2" apart, and the washing instructions are "hand wash in tepid water and dry flat."  Hmm...  I don't do hand washing, but my fancy washing machine has a hand wash cycle that should do the trick.  The "dry flat" part may be more of a challenge, but maybe I can get away with machine drying it on low heat, delicate cycle?  Maybe I can at least partially machine dry, and then find someplace in the house where I can lay it out flat over towels, where the dogs can't get at it?  We'll see. 

No more tangents!  Back to my project!

All Three Layers, Ready for Basting

Finally, I centered my quilt top over the backing fabric and batting.  The seamlines on the quilt top made it easy to find the centers of each side and get everything nice and straight.  As you can see, the backing and batting are quite a bit bigger than the quilt top.  Most instructions tell you to just make sure your batting and backing are 2-3" bigger than your quilt top on all sides.  Again, the fear of "I cut it twice and it's still too short" prevented me from cutting off the excess backing and batting fabric prior to layering and basting.  I smoothed the quilt top out over the batting as best as I could, and started putting curved safety pins through all three layers, starting at the center of the quilt and working my way out towards the edges.   

Curved Safety Pins for Basting and Kwik Klip Tool

I'm using nickel plated, non-rusting, Size #1 curved safety pins, and I use that Kwik Klip tool to close the pins, to reduce sore fingers.  By the time I'm finished basting this quilt, there will be at least 500 safety pins in it, spaced about 2-3" apart. 

Now that I'm going over all of this in my head again, I'm glad I have less than 10 safety pins in the quilt so far, because I want to double check to make sure that the appliqued Scrabble label on the quilt backing is completely underneath the quilt top, so I won't cut part of it off when I trim off the excess backing fabric.  It would be REALLY ANNOYING to spend hours pin basting the entire quilt and then have to take all the pins out, shift the layers, and start over again!