I can relate to your difficulty, as I would much rather make the top, then quilt, but I've never found sandwiching to be fun. I find it more difficult now that we have downsized and I do not have the large table I had used. I tried laying the quilt on top of a very large cutting mat on top of a queen size bed, when sandwiching our DGD's quilt for her new "big girl" bed. My DH helped, but I had a few "oops" places where I had to piece the backing as it was off an inch or so, and I doubt I will use that method again. If it were a lap quilt, that might have worked, but laying the quilt on the floor is not an option as I don't have a crane to get me back up. LOL. I suppose all quilters have at least some portion of the process that they find disagreeable, but we get past that.