Partially unloading/reloading quilt on longarm
 

My kitten has discovered that a quilt loaded on the longarm makes a great hammock. I'm going to start a quilt tomorrow but if I don't get it finished I'm thinking about unpinning the bottom of the quilt, folding it over the takeup bar and then reloading it the next day. Will it be difficult to re-pin the quilt? I know I can float the top if necessary.

Try crushed up tin foil.

Put clean mouse traps (that snap) on the top of the quilt , maybe on top of tissue paper. We did this with our Great Dane dog on our sofa. He did not get on the sofa after the first few tries. Put a clean sheet over the top. Shut the door if you can to keep the cat out. Or shut your cat in another room when you have a quilt loaded. I wouldn't undo the quilt. That's a lot more work than repositioning the cat.

I think you can leave the back pinned on. Here's what I do. I fold the batting onto the top, then cover it with plastic grocery bags.

That would never work with Oliver. He'd consider that the best place ever to play.

I quilt on a vintage longarm. I have had to remove a whole quilt before. My daughter loaded it and the backing was almost a foot short. We were amazed that that could happen. We KNOW how to measure, or do we??? Of course, we had quilted too close to the bottom on the backing. She was rolling and I wasn't watching what she was doing. It was a bed size quilt and had to come off to add more backing. I was quilting with a panto.

We marked with a pin where the quilt top started on the frame, unpinned the whole quilt, attached the extra backing, ironed the new seam open and then reloaded. It really wasn't a big deal. It was easier because part (most) of the quilt was very stabilized by the quilting. I float my top and batting, so we pinned the backing back on the frame. Rolled all three layers twice to get it even, lined the pantograph back up and finished in no time at all. Looking back, I was glad something like that happened while my daughter was here. It made it a lot easier that there was two of us reloading, but I could have done it by myself. So, the moral here is....unload if you need to and reload. It's not that big of a deal.

Side note: After having to reload a quilt because of the backing shortage, I have not hesitated to take a quilt off the frame and reload sideways when I want to quilt a long outside border without having to roll several times. "smile" When I do that, I only load the part I need to have pinned to be stabilized for quilting. The quilt is only pinned to the leaders, none of it is on the rollers. The excess part of the quilt just hangs over the edge. When I figured that out, it saved a lot of time.

And that is exactly the reason why I don't get a kitten or cat as badly as I would love to have one. My longarm is in a space I can't close off. So sad!

My kitty has tried that and fell thru so now she goes underneath the frame and sleeps on the rolled up batting. I've tried a spray bottle filled with water but have to catch her at it to get her attention. Sneaky little BRAT!!!!!

Not to be alarmist but this sounds like a very good way for the cat to get a real injury. I'd recommend deterring with foil/plastic bags some texture that the cat doesn't like to sit on.