Originally Posted by
CherryPie
Dunster...I got Marti Mitchell's book but it's like Greek to me. I guess I must be pretty dense to not understand it. I wish I did as trying to quilt even a twin sized quilt is awfully hard on my arms and shoulders.
The first explanation I ran across for my favorite method (splitting the batting into 3 parts) was in a book by Debra Wagner. Unfortunately, I don't know which book; however, all three of her books are fabulous.
This method is my favorite because no one will ever know you did the quilt in sections. I used it with 505 basting spray.
Basically I layered my backing and batting, with batting centered on top. I visually divided the batting into 3 pieces. I placed a cutting mat underneath the batting, used a permanent Sharpie to mark registration lines (horizontal marks) along where I was going to cut, and then cut the batting. Before separating the batting pieces, I used the Sharpie to also mark "top" of the batting and "right" (for the batting piece to be removed to the right side). Did the same for the left, then removed the left and right pieces of batting to a safe place. Next step was to peel down the remaining center batting and spray baste as usual. Then I centered the top over this and spray basted the center of the top to the center of the batting.
The center of the quilt is the hardest to machine quilt. Removing the batting from right and left sections means that you are stuffing just fabric under the arm of the machine, making maneuvering much easier. When quilting the center, I left about 6" unquilted on each side. This is important, because you need some space to re-attach the batting.
To re-attach a batting side, I simply laid out the quilt and peeled the top and backing apart (where the excess spray had stuck them together). I used batting tape (which is really just strips of fusible interfacing) to reattach a batting side to the middle batting, and spray basted that side. After quilting one side, I did the same for the other side.
With this method it's really important to mark the batting as you cut so that you can re-attach the batting pieces exactly as they were. If you don't mark, it's really easy to struggle with trying attach the left batting to the right side, or attach a side upside down or wrong side up. Don't skip the registration marks!
Hope this helps. I have not seen the Marti Michell book, but I expect she describes this method somewhere in there.