Actually, it's Dining Room Floor Monday.
Recently I pin-basted my Hands2Help Race quilt and the other race quilt I'm making for my SIL for her Alaska friend. Both are too big to pin baste anywhere in my house except on the dining room floor. So we moved the table & chairs into the front room temporarily, to give me lots of floor space for basting.As long as the furniture is already out, I might as well pin baste another quilt while I can, so here's my Dancing Plus laid out. This top is 66" by 81".
Since I have only sub-floor under the carpet, I can pin directly into & through the carpet to smooth out the backing and the top. Here it's laid out and the backing is pinned around the edges, but the top hasn't been pinned yet. The space works well, but it requires crawling around on the floor, and my knees don't love that so much any more.
Little Murphy doesn't need to go into the dining room for any reason, and I don't want him unsupervised on the carpet, so we keep the barricade up across the doorway all the time. He sits on the hallway side and watches while I'm crawling around in the dining room pinning.
I need to get this pinned this week so we can get the furniture put back where it belongs. DH is getting very tired of the table & chairs being in the front room.
How about you - where do you have space to baste?
Yikes -- my knees feel sorry for your knees! When I basted I used to take my quilts to the quilt guild meeting and basted on tables there. The advantage to that is generally someone would wander by and help with the pinning. You might check with local long armers to see if they would baste on the long arm for you -- it isn't all that hard. And, one other thought maybe there is a rental long arm you could do yourself. My knees would be screaming at me if I tried to do anything on the floor for any length of time. Love your Dancing Plus quilt.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest space to baste and layout quilts is in the space between my living room and kitchen. I have to move some furniture around to make enough room for larger quilts, too. I think it is smart to do several at once if you can after going through the effort of moving large furniture!
ReplyDeleteThis is pretty! It looks great on the floor - you're lucky you can pin it there.
ReplyDeleteI am lucky to hand my quilts over to a longarmer. I have done charity quilts in my garage on portable 8' conference tables. I have two that I push together. You need the rubber strap on pads for your knees. I'd never be able to be down on my knees for too long. Quilt is awesome! =^.^= Sandi
ReplyDeleteI baste my quilts at the local senior center where our guild meets. I can put a couple of tables together and don't have to get on my knees. Thank goodness.
ReplyDeleteI learned this from Connie at Freemotion quilting... I bought table cloth weights at the dollar store. They are metal and have clips on them. I have a decent size cutting table in my sewing room and I can baste most quilts on it. The backing hangs over the edges, I clip the weights all the way around (and use a LOT of them) and then spread the batting and quilt top over the backing. I can gently pull the whole quilt to baste any edges that need it and the weight of the clips keeps things flat. So far I have not had a problem with this method. Fortunately I do have space in my family room to baste large quilts, if need be. Jan, how do you keep the carpet from getting caught in your basting pins?
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