My dog approves of my basting job
I'm not ashamed to admit that I used duct tape to keep the backing fabric taut whilst pinning. Also, I ran out of safety pins and had to get more. I had to use around 350 in all! I laid out flat on it and flattened the fabric between old and new pins going radially towards the corners. It's not perfectly square, but it's pretty darn close. One of the sides bows out *a little*, but I doubt someone else would notice. I'm pretty proud!
Just in case anyone was wondering, I did the math and there are 2,499 individual squares in this quilt! I plan on chalking out my waves pattern and quilting it this weekend. I'll let you know how my first foray into long-arm quilting goes...