Pin Basting on the Floor, Start to Finish
Okay. Top's done, batting's picked, backing's pressed and big enough. Now we actually build the thing. This is the lesson where you find out if your living room floor is big enough for your ambitions.
Here's my mildly unpopular opinion, since I know some of you have heard about basting spray and are hoping I'll tell you to use it. I won't. Pin baste. Spray basting is fine in theory, but for lap-sized work it's messy, it gunks up your needle, and you end up with sticky patches that attract every thread and pet hair in the house. Pins are slower and they are also more honest. You can see exactly where your layers are holding.
Clear the floor first
You need a flat, hard surface bigger than your quilt. Carpet works in a pinch but hardwood or tile is better because you can tape into it without wrecking anything. I use painter's tape, not masking tape, because masking tape pulls up finish sometimes and painter's tape doesn't.
Move the furniture. Don't try to baste around the coffee table. You'll regret it about two-thirds of the way through when you're on your knees reaching around a table leg with a pin in your teeth.
Layer it
Backing goes down first, right side down. Smooth it out and tape the edges to the floor, working from the center out to each side. You want it taut but not stretched drum-tight. If you pull it too hard it'll relax later and give you puckers on the back, which nobody wants to explain.
Batting goes on next, centered. Smooth it with your hands, no pins yet, just get the wrinkles out. Then your top, right side up, centered on the batting. Smooth again, working from the middle outward, same as you did with the backing.
Stand back and look at it before you pin anything. Check the corners are square-ish, check there's batting and backing showing evenly all the way around. This is the moment to fix problems, not after you've got two hundred pins in.
Pinning
I use curved basting pins, the kind that are bent so you can scoop through all three layers without lifting the whole sandwich off the floor. Straight pins work but your knees will hate you more.
Start in the center and work outward in a grid, roughly a fist's width apart, maybe four inches. Closer together if you're newer to free-motion, because more pins means less shifting, and shifting is what gives you those little tucks on the back that show up right when you're two hours into quilting and can't do anything about it.
Kneel, don't crouch on your toes the whole time, or your back will be done before you're a third of the way through. I keep a kneeling pad by the door for exactly this.
Pin flat parts first, then go back and get the tricky spots, seam intersections, any spot where the top has extra bulk. Those places want a pin close by so they can't shift while you're sewing over them.
The Alice question
Alice asked me once why I don't just buy blankets. I didn't have a good answer that night. I said, "honestly, I don't know," and we both laughed about it. But I think about that question more than I let on, especially on the floor, on my knees, three-quarters of the way through pinning a queen-sized top I'm not even making right now, just a lap quilt, and my back already aching.
The truth is I could buy a blanket. It'd be warmer, probably, and definitely faster. But there's something about being down here on the floor smoothing out fabric by hand that I don't get anywhere else in my week. It's slow in a way almost nothing else in my life is slow. I don't need a better answer than that, and neither do you.
A caution
Watch your knees on stray pins once you're done. I've stepped on more open safety pins than I want to admit, and once you're mid-project it's easy to forget there's a whole floor's worth of sharp things where you're about to walk in socks. Sweep the area when you're through, or at least do a visual pass.
Also, if you're basting on carpet and taping isn't an option, weight the edges instead, books, canned goods, whatever's heavy and flat. Just don't skip anchoring the backing completely. An unanchored backing is where most of your shifting problems start.
Before next time
Get your sandwich pinned and set it somewhere flat where it won't get walked on or sat on. Next time we start quilting it for real, and you'll want it ready to go, not still living on your kitchen floor with the cat circling it.