Originally Posted by Jim's Gem

Hi Grace,
You can spray your quilt sandwich with basing spray, there are several kinds available, and the quilt in the ditch, or even across the diagonal. I have a couple of patterns that I have used that I quilted across the diagonal with first a regular straight stitch, using a walking foot, and after I got my new machine I used a fancy stitch without the walking foot. There have been a couple of good threads on here lately about spray-basting, everyone's preference and how to best do it. After I baste mine, if I am quilting on the diag, I frequently will use cheap narrow masking tape and mark the quilting lines on one direction, then roll the quilt from either side leaving a tape line in the approximate middle to start the quilting, just unroll from one side and reroll on the other until you go across the first half of the quilt. I then will put in on the floor and reroll the quilted side nice and tight and start over with the other side. I have made about a dozen queen size quilts and have quilted them on my regular sewing machines.