I pinned down my first couple of quilts that I did and then tried floating the top & batting. I have a lot better success keeping everything straight and not getting tucks anywhere in a quilt when I float the top. I have a very good eye for knowing if the quilt is still square or not and they all seem to try to move a little bit, or maybe it's because I start from the right side as I am standing at the back and move towards the left with the sewing. I don't do a lot of free motion quilting yet. I'm still doing Panto's.
I will say that as I move down the quilt, every time I roll to the next area, I do pin the sides of the area that I am working on to keep it as still as possible. I, also, have clamps that I use to keep the sewing area taut. I remove those pins when I am through quilting in the area, roll the quilt, and then re-pin. It works well for me and I am a very new long arm quilter.
Edited to add: I quilt on a very seasoned 1998 Nolting long arm with a 24" throat. If I had one of the longarms that had the locks so you could sew a straight line down the sides, I would not pin the sides, I would baste them. But my Nolting is dependent on me to go straight and, good luck with that. lol
Another thing. I use those big corsage pins that you can get in almost any silk flower area in stores to pin my quilts. I did have to smooth them down because they had a lot of "grabbies" on them. I used a combination of steel wool and sandpaper. These pins are study enough to hold anything I want to quilt. They do not roll well if I leave them in the sides so I cannot roll the quilt unless I remove them. No problem, I only put 3 or 4 on each side for each sewing area. It takes about 10 seconds to remove both sides.
Merry Christmas to all. Foods in the oven and I am catching up on my favorite website.
Last edited by Barb in Louisiana; 12-25-2014 at 05:15 AM.