Pinning Reggie's Quilt

I've been up since 3am with a sick baby (dog). He finally fell asleep but I was wide awake. The TV is still out, due to our lovely ice storm. I'm bored. What can I do that doesn't take much brain power? I know, let's pin the quilt together. When I purchased my safety pins I knew I needed them, but wasn't sure what size to get. I got a 200 pack, 100 of  1 1/2" and 100 of 1 1/16". More on this later.

After watching a few YouTube videos on making a quilt sandwich, I set to work. I couldn't find masking tape (we probably have some in the basement but it's not worth falling on the ice to try to go get it). My choices were packing tape or Scotch tape. I feared the packing tape might be a bit too sticky so opted for the Scotch variety and set about taping down the quilt back.

Of course you can't see the tape because it's transparent. Take my word for it, the back is taped down securely. Next I cut a piece of batting just slightly larger than the back. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of that step. The batting was laid over the top of the back piece and smoothed out. I then placed the quilt top onto the batting and smoothed it out, as well. From what I saw on those videos it is good to have your back piece larger than the quilt top, so maybe I did it right after all? Once the pieces were all layered and smoothed it was time to baste it all together with the safety pins, to keep the fabrics from shifting during the machine quilting process. Which brings us back to my safety pins, above. Before you pin your quilt together you have to decide where you will be stitching. I am going to attempt the "stitch in the ditch" method which means I have to keep the pins away from the seams so they don't interfere with the presser foot as I'm sewing. It was glaringly apparent that the 1 1/2" pins were too big for this purpose. I liked the 1 1/16" pins. It might be difficult to open and close them if they were any smaller. Another thing that became apparent? I'm going to require a LOT more pins (not for the little dog and cat quilts but for when I make one to fit a people bed).

I want to make sure the layers are going to stay put. I figure using more pins and taking my time will save me a lot of grief. The red frame piece was too narrow to use the safety pins on. I opted to use straight pins to anchor that area and will also begin sewing there, so I can remove the pins and they won't be in the way while I sew the remainder of the quilt. Now comes the fun part.