Originally Posted by
cathycabot
Looking at your picture it looks different than I load. I pin my back and batting to the front rod, I the pin the other end of the backing to the rod close to your wall, make sure when doing that step you go under your middle rod. Roll up your backing then feed batting under middle rod and let it float over third rod no need to roll batting, now pin other end of quilt top to middle rod and roll towards front. Quilt from front rolling as you go. Hope this helps .
I agree. I've hand quilted for over 40 yrs. I currently quilt on a large floor frame where everything is stretched out, full-size, and pinned in place. (My preferred way, because I have much more control of tension, puckering, etc.) But, when my space was more limited, I used my same floor frame very similar to what you describe in the above quote, cathycabot. (I used my shorter "sticks"/rods on the ends, that were more like 3 ft. instead of the full width of the quilt, and my full-length rods for the front and back rods.) The one edge of my backing was pinned to my front rod and the other end pinned and rolled neatly onto the back one. I floated the batting and, since I had not middle rod, I pinned the top in place as far in as I could reach from my front rod and floated it along with my batting. Kind of rolling them together along the back of the frame to keep it off the floor. This worked fine. I like having the backing on both the front and back rollers to manage the tension better. I really think having the backing and the batting on the same back roller would make it hard to keep the tension right while quilting. I'm sorry you spent so much time loading this, but really do suggest you rethink it. Private message me if you need more clarity.
Later: Just looked at your picture again...really, all you need to do is unroll your back roller and take the batting out and re-roll it with backing only. Should be able to do that in a jiffy. Happy quilting! Your top is amazing!!!
