How to Baste a Large Quilt on a Small Table

Basting large quilts can be somewhat daunting and this quilt happens to be an extra long twin. So not as wide as some quilts are, but definitely as long as most quilts are. And I currently don't have a really large table to baste this on nor do I have some place I can go that has large tables that I can push together and fit my whole quilt on. And I know this happens to a lot of us so, you know, how do we handle this? Well, one of the best things I can tell you about are these clamps. So I buy these clamps at the big box home supply stores like Lowe's, Home Depot, that sort of thing. They run about a $1.99 each, when you first get them they have rubber on everything but the rubber falls off 'cause they're cheap little buggers. But they work on pretty much any table as long as its lip isn't any wider than about an inch. So if the table's thicker than an inch, you're not gonna be able to get this on. What's nice about these is that they can clamp your quilt to the table. Now, this is a quilt that I've already done a little bit of quilting on and I get questioned all the time, how do you pin base these large quilts? Do you put pins in everything and then quilt? Aren't they gonna fall out? Aren't they gonna prick you, all that stuff and the answer's yeah, I don't put them in everything. I put them where I'm gonna quilt first. So I'm gonna kind of backtrack about how I would go about quilting this, I mean, not quilting this but basing this and then talk about what the next step is. So I would take my backing fabric 'cause right now you're seeing all three layers but I'll show you here. This is my backing fabric. I would take just it and put the middle of it on this table so that the middle of it was running right across the center of this table. And I would clamp just like you see these clamps on here, but it would be just the backing fabric, clamp, clamp and then a clamp here and a clamp here. And then I would spread my batting so that the middle of my batting was sitting right across the middle of my backing. And then I would set my quilt tops. So that middle of my quilt top was sitting right across my batting. And then I would simply put pins right through the area I'm gonna quilt first, which is the middle of the quilt. And then I would put some safety pins in the outside border. Then I would unclamp things, move it either one direction or the other, forward or backwards. Reclamp just the two sides backing and this side backing. But this side all three layers that have already been basted. And then I would simply put in a few safety pins on the outside edge and nothing in here. Then I would move it again. Reclamp just that backing fabric, all three layers on this side, only the backing fabric on this side. Re-smooth the batting, re-smoothed the quilt top and just put some safety pins out here in the borders. And I'll continue to do that until the whole length of one side was done. And then I would go to the other side and do the whole length of the other side. And what I would basically have would be pins across the middle where I'm going to stitch and then safety pins all the way around the outside edge. So now I'm gonna show you kind of what I'm talking about with those pins where I'm just about to stitch. So I have stitched this one row. And so the next thing I'm gonna stitch is this row and that row. So now those are gonna get pinned. These are the straight pins that I constantly talk about. They are silk pins. Unfortunately, some other ones got mixed in there. So I will be pulling those out but these are straight pins that have no head or the head is little and metal. Whereas these are glass head pins and I don't wanna use those 'cause my foot of my machine is gonna get stuck on those. Whereas these little tiny guys with this itty bitty metal head, the machine is not gonna get stuck on. So I'm just kind of spreading some of those around, not gonna use these guys, kind of throw those back there. And I'm gonna start pinning here where I'm gonna quilt next. But I wanna know what I'm quilting next in this. And I can make this decision and this decision right now but I can't make any more decisions yet 'cause I don't know how this is gonna look. But I know that this one is gonna be pretty simple and straightforward because I will be stitching in this dark blue color. And I will be going through the designs of each of these circles and around them and then stippling in the background, coming in and going through this dark area here. And around through this dark area here and around, in here and stippling but going around these little pedals and around. So everything's gonna be stitched in dark blue and it's only gonna be the dark blue that's going be stitched. So I know that where I put my pins, if I put it in the light blue I'm fine. So if I put a pin here, I'm fine. And I want my pins has to be a certain width apart, about every two inches or so. So if I have a pin there, then I can put a pin here. And if I have a pin there, then I can put a pin here. So I'm gonna keep putting these pins in the lighter blue areas that I know I'm not going to be stitching in. If I don't know where I'm gonna stitch, I can put them where I know I probably will stitch and that's okay. It's not gonna kill me to stitch over them but there's always a risk of breaking the pin. I don't think you're ever gonna break your needle not on these pins but on any other pin you're probably gonna break your needle if you hit the pin. And if you break your needle, there's a good chance that you will knock timing out of your machine and you don't wanna do that because that's about a $200 fix. So best to just put them where they're not gonna be sewn on. If you can say, this is where I'm not gonna sew. So I hope you're seeing that as I'm, that was my clamp, that as I am putting them in, I also tuck their tip back into the fabric so that those tips don't come out as easily and poke me as I'm quilting. So that's this portion, but I'm also gonna be quilting this portion and probably this portion right here too. So I'm just gonna put some pins in there. I have no idea how I'm gonna be stitching it. So I'm just gonna put them about every two to three inches. So I put the pin in and then I tuck the tip in. Does it matter what direction they go in? No, you just put them in however you can get them in. I just happened to be putting them in this direction because this is where I'm standing. If I was standing on the other side, they'd be going in a different direction. Okay, so now this row is ready for quilting. So now I'm gonna go ahead and get this row ready for quilting too. And I can do that because I've already done this one and I can work in both directions. If I wanted to, I could have put this already quilted portion down here, lower and pinned the next two sections in that direction and worked all in that direction. It doesn't really matter. I'm just trying to work smart. Okay, now these, I have to be honest, I have no idea how I'm gonna quilt these. I do know that I've got a pin stuck down here that I'm gonna pull out. I have no idea how I'm gonna quilt this. When I think about it, nothing immediately comes to mind. So what I'm thinking is that what I might do is heavily quilt every other one. So that the one that doesn't get quilted pops out. So I think that's what I'm gonna do, but I just don't know what the heavily quilting is gonna be. So in that case, if I start, if I ignore this first one is 'cause it's gonna be heavily quilted and pin this one and then pin every other one. That should be plenty of pinning. That doesn't mean that this one in between is gonna get no quilting at all. It just means it's gonna have very little quilting and that's gonna be kind of a cool effect. And I'm always looking for cool effects. So this is about how close I do my pinning for machine quilting. Is this a pain in the heinie? Yes it is. But it's not as big of a pain in the heinie as what happens when you don't baste well and you end up with a quilt that's got areas of fullness and areas of tightness and it doesn't lay flat and it's a big old pain. So a little bit of work now makes the rest of the process so much easier. Now the biggest thing I can tell you about this whole thing that is gonna surprise you is that when you're done stitching the body of the quilt you're gonna have to re-baste your borders. And you're like going, what, then why do I baste them to begin with? Well, you baste them to begin with just to hold that stuff together 'cause otherwise it's gonna be flopping about. So do you have to put this many pins in it? Maybe not but I just like it to be properly basted. And I'm gonna tell you why, so I'm gonna show you why actually. You're probably gonna have to re-baste your border. Now it could be that it doesn't happen to you. It could be depending on how much quilting you put in to your quilt that you don't have to do that. But I tend to very heavily quilt and so it's sucks up the areas that are quilted. All right, generally what happens is, and I'm gonna show you kind of right here is as I quilt, so I'm gonna hold this still. I'm gonna say, as I quilt I'm pushing out fullness, pushing out fullness, pushing out fullness, pushing it out, pushing it out, pushing it out, pushing it out, pushing it out. And then I hit that pen. And now I've got a bunch of fullness there and that's not gonna work. So once I get this body quilted, then I take those pins out. I don't restretch anything. I simply re-smooth the batting and re-smooth the top on top and repin on the outside edge and then quilt those borders. So just be prepared that isn't a mistake that you did. You didn't do something wrong when you have to readjust the fullness that's in your borders. But this is why we make sure that our backing fabric is a lot wider than our quilt and longer than our quilt. That's why we have excess out there. Of course, mine isn't a lot but it's about an inch and a half. And so I always say about two inches bigger on a smaller quilt, three inches bigger on each side on a bed size quilt. And if you're a long arming, it's gotta be six inches bigger on that outside. So this is how you handle the basting of a large quilt on a small table and the basting using straight pins when you're going to machine quilt. I hope you have fun doing it.