Inspired me to make one
 

Thank you for sharing this! After I started Googling, I was surprised to find a few others. I studied your photos and all the other photos and brief descriptions I could find, created a design, and bought lumber to copy this. It really is ingenious. I just need to weather to warm up just a bit so I can get out on the balcony to cut the notches and do the sanding.

I suspect the 4 notches are for 4 rails, one each for the top, batting, and back and the fourth for the uptake as you complete a section. As mentioned and I agree that without help, it would be a pain to advance worked sections. My remedy will be to use the "tabletop basting method" with three rails, and then just two rails on this stand to do the actual quilting, like you show in your picture.

Again, thank you very much for this inspiration! I had never seen a stand like this before it is perfect for small spaces.

My MIL had one years ago. I never saw it set up; but my son, who is 55 now, says he remembers helping his grandfather lugging hers up the stairs for her. It was a monster of a quilting frame as he remembers. This looks to be more manageable and really simple design that did the job. You have a priceless piece of heritage.

What a treasure! Generations of quilters using same frame!

I sure wish my dad was still around. He could have made this in an afternoon and he might have added some of his own artistic flourishes. I like it's simplicity and functionality.

joym and LornaLee: Probably with thumb tacks. I have two quilt racks now, but they are just sticks of wood to make the frame. The quilt is tacked on full size so you can work on it all around before it's "ready to roll". It takes two people to undo two corners and roll the quilt toward the center until there is a new space to tie or hand quilt.

The corners are held in place with "C" clamps, stakes that go into the large holes in the boards, or bolts and nuts. I have holes in mine that accommodate bolts.

My first set may have been from 1872 made by my husbands grandparents, and the second was made by my son in 1980 with baseboards from the house in which I live now. Beautiful wood 96 inches long. Many a quilt has been tied or basted on these frames.

I have added strips of denim stapled on the boards so I can pin the quilt to that with large safety pins. Love doing that.

I have one that was my grandmothers that is very similar to yours. The cross pieces have leaders tacked to it (which need replaced; the tacks are seriously rusted) then you pin the quilt to the leaders. Probably 100 years old.

What a marvelous story and quilt frame. I'd never seen one like this, so thank you for sharing. What's especially wonderful about this, is that you still use it. :cool:

May I have the dimensions on the top bars?
my husband is going to make me some.
Ty
Heather

This post is from 2011. The author has not been on the board in a very long time.