D256: Jumping in

So before we went away for our long weekend I decided to get started on basting this thing together.

Pre-apologies for the rubbish pics.  My work tends to be in the evening so good natural light isn't available for photography.  I'd promise to get some better shot before I'm done, but I'm not really the place you should be coming for a tutorial on quilt basting!  I do however have a great tip for you...

I have a big fold-out cardboard cutting board.  It's grid is in 2cm increments and I love it.   It fits on the floor snugly between our couch, the toy tub and our coffee table, or on our Ottoman by length with the width overhanging.  I love that I can fold up a portion if the work or the space is short.  One of its best features, besides being cheap, and folding and storing very nicely, is that you can use it for blocking.  Just a towel under a knitted item, plus some well placed pins and some misty water squirts, and you've got a sturdy flat blocking base.

Tip of the day: get a large cardboard cutting board (sometimes called a "pattern sewing cutting board").  It's cheap, easy to move and store, has a variable length and you can stick pins in it.  Be mindful of any precious tabletop you place it on, but otherwise it'll be the best $12 you ever spent. 

I pinned the backing down, ensuring it was even, fairly well aligned and flat, and lay down the batting.  I was able to use my cutting ruler and the lines on the board to square up the quilt top and use pins to hold it in place around the outside.  Once I'd basted around the outside I set to evening the rippled, warped or puckered patches. The clip in my last post was so good at showing me where, why and how to pin.

The left, below, shows the alignment of the fabrics against the grid. The edges had been aligned, basted and the pins removed.

The first pin in the right photo is correcting the width of the border by pinching it a bit at the seam.

This is where I got to before I had to get to bed... Look at that cutting board go!

Not especially even pinning but it seems to be a fairly even top.  I haven't finished basting it yet anyway. That will be more evenly spaced and organised and I can give it a final check then.