the hand quilting frame-up

When Bob and I were visiting my mom for Christmas, we got to help her set up and mount a new quilt on the frame for hand quilting.  This is going to be a "big boy" quilt for Jack, who is now 3.  It's larger than a standard queen, so she needed new poles that were longer.  They are standard bannister railings from the lumber yard.  

I'll see if I can kind of lay this out in steps for you.  You don't find instructions for this sort of thing very often, she does it all by memory from years ago when her mom did quilting on a frame similar to this.

1.  The backing, batting and quilt top were all laid out smooth and flat on the floor.  We put some pins through the backing into the carpet to help hold it in place and try to prevent it shifting and causing wrinkles. 

2.  We used lots of safety pins to secure the 3 layers together all over the quilt, about 6-8 inches apart.  It's important to get all the way through to the backing fabric but not attach it to the carpet!

4.  Mom had prepared the fabric for the leaders - strips stapled to the wooden poles which then serve as the way to attach the quilt to the poles.  She used a strip of fabric from a sheet, I think about 4" wide and pressed in half.  The cut edges are stapled down, leaving the folded edge for the quilt to be pinned to.  You have to make sure that the strip is real straight on the pole, and this is one reason the hand rails work great.  They have one flattened surface, and we used that as a landmark to keep it straight.  I think this part was the hardest, even with a very good staple gun it was easy to get them only partially punched in.  I'm really glad Bob was handy to help with that.

5.  After the fabric was attached to the poles, we laid the pole on the floor by the quilt.  The backing was just barely big enough on this quilt, but we made it work.  We aligned the raw edge of the quilt top with the stapled edge, then safety pinned through the layers into the leader strip on the pole.  This has to be attached with safety pins only a few inches apart, to keep it from having too much stress or stretch at any one spot.

6.  Repeat the same process with the pole and stapling and pinning on the opposite end of the quilt.

7.  We had 2 people rolling the quilt onto a pole with the other person holding the opposite end to keep it a little bit taut, but not too much.  The rollers have to go slowly and make sure it is staying straight and even as they go.

8.  The 2 poles are then lifted up and someone has to hold them while another person lines up the "legs" of the frame.  The legs are kind of like a cross with a wider base.  The cross piece of wood has openings for the hand rails to be slid into at each end. 

9.  After the quilt is in place and the frame is supporting itself, there are large screws (the thing with the metal ring in the closest part of the picture above) that are tightened up.  This keeps the poles from rolling while the quilting of a section is done.  Then they can be loosened to advance the quilt and roll it around the second pole.  Eventually, the whole quilt gets rolled onto the second pole as the work progresses.  In the picture below, mom uses a screwdriver through the ring to get it good and tight.  I forgot to mention that she also places wooden wedges with the pole into the hole to get it tight.  She taps those in with her pliers.

10.  You can probably see in the picture below that there are some rubber bands laced around little pegs on the top side of the cross piece.  She uses them hooked over safety pins in the edge of the quilt to keep it taut while she's working in that area.  Also, you can see part of the tilting mechanism that allows her to tip the quilt top at an angle to work on it more comfortably.  She listens to a lot of recorded books from the library while she stitches.  She's had some shoulder pain this fall, and has had to sometimes limit the amount of time she can stitch so it doesn't get worse.

So that's pretty much all I know about using a hand quilting frame and how to get a quilt mounted on it.  Now comes the real art of hand quilting!