Hello. I, Mr Fuzzypants, will explain to you how I
assemble a quilt.
First, you spread out your batting. Have your human
iron it first. You can play under the ironing board and
try to catch their toes through the curtain of batting.
It's good fun, and it's best to get all the wrinkles out
before you begin.
Try to get everything as smooth as you can. My batting
here is a quite a bit larger than my quilt, which is fine.
Lay your quilt top on top on your batting. You want to
smooth it so there are no wrinkles or lumps of batting.
This step can take some time, and having a second set
of paws hands can be quite helpful.
Once everything is as flat and smooth as you can get it,
have someone with thumbs place pins through out
to hold the layers together. I use straight pins here,
because they aren't going to stay in for very long.
I like to have a show playing in the background while
the excess batting gets trimmed. I'm watching Star
Trek here. I dig the young Spock. He has great ears.
With the layers firmly pinned, carefully fold and pick up
the quilt top and batting as one.
Now, spread the backing out. The human pieced the
back as well, but there's no need.. you know. You'll
notice it's wrong side up. This is a good thing, the
human tells me.
Now, the human has gone and taped the back to the
floor with low tack painter's tape. She thinks this makes
is easier to lay the top on, because the back won't slide.
BUT, I think is a waste. With the back taped to the floor,
I can no longer race across the room and slide. Stupid
human.
Now, lay the top and backing piece on top. Shifting it
carefully until it is properly arranged. The human
always makes the back larger than it needs to be, so
she can cheat and trim off the excess. Cheater,
cheater. There's a lot of smoothing and grumbling
at this point, so I took a nap.
Now you get out your safety pins, which are totally evil,
you know. Ever tried opening and closing a safety pin
without thumbs? Discrimation! Pin, pin, pin. Pah!
Now, take a little spit bath while your human crawls
around on hands and knees while she turns and pins the
edge of the quilt, removing the tape as she goes.
Then she flips the quilt over to double check the back
is smooth and without wrinkles or folds. At this
point she removes the straight pins from the back.
My human is LAZY! Instead of cutting a separate
piece of fabric for the edging, she just folds the back
around to the front, tucking it under itself, pins it in
place, and then she zips around the outside with the
sewing machine (which I am no longer allowed
to sleep on while she sews. More descrimination!).
There the edge is finished, and now I can sleep on it
while she gets ready to tie the layers.