Beam me out, Scotty

There was a point yesterday afternoon where I was kind of stuck in a small uncomfortable chair, surrounded by long pieces of quilt frame.  I could not move to get to the computer and I could not move to get out of the room.  I sort of built myself in.

The quilt frame is built and while I am pleased with it in some ways, man it is big.

Now I begin to make the quilt sandwich.  I have the base ready to go.  I have the top.  The tricky bit is that bag of small batts.  Every single quilt video online is working with a single large batt.  Doing that would be a breeze.  These small batts of wool that I will be using are going to have to be put together, on the backing and will have to be held in place with a lot of sewing after the quilt sandwich has been assembled.

I have several books on quilting and hope to find a little something to reinforce what I remember from when I was a little girl.  In my minds eye, I can see Auntie Lorraine placing the small batts made with her hand cards on the backing, which was attached to the frame.  But I don't remember if anything was done to hold them together or if the pieces were just placed and snugged closely together.

I do know, that each of the aunties who were getting a quilt that year, had assembled a patch work top from left overs from sewing and from old clothes that were no longer repairable.  None were the fancy kind of top that people make today.  They were things that were serviceable, that looked nice, but that were simple, because on top of the work of sewing a top, they had baking and kids and meals, and a thousand and one other things to do that took so much more effort than things do today.  Its a cold country here and a wool quilt was a necessity, not just something pretty for the top of the bed.  The many rows of squares meant that there was a lot of sewing and that each of those small hand cards was held firmly in place by quilting it all together.

So today, my goal is to figure out how best to lay out and secure the batts and with luck, to be ready to begin quilting tomorrow.