Quilting

Step 9 Attach the batting

Once the quilt top is all pieced together it's time to add the backing fabric and the batting, which is the stuffing material that goes inside of the quilt layers. First make sure you have a piece of fabric big enough to cover the entire back of the project. Sew fabric swaths together until you have a large enough sheet, then spread it out on your work surface right side down and smooth out any wrinkles.

Take your roll of batting and spread it over the backing fabric, smoothing both layers down carefully as you go. If your quilt is too wide and you need to use two separate batting rolls you can attach the batting sheets together with long basting stitches. All you need to do is hold them in place until you do the quilting, but you do want to be sure that the batting doesn't fold up on itself while you're trying to work with it. Lay the top right side up on top of the batting and smooth the layers some more. Working across the fabric from one edge smooth the fabric, then use basting pins about every 10 inches to hold the layers together. Smooth and pin, smooth and pin, to work your way across the three layers.

Once the whole thing is pinned up, go back across the whole thing and replace the pins with long lines of hand-sewn basting stitches. Again, you could probably get away using the pins, but I hate the stress of quilting around them and they can tug at the fabric. The reason you pin first is so you can easily pick the fabric up to stitch it. Once the whole quilt is firmly held together with basting stitches you're ready to start quilting it.