Basting your Quilt and Cloth Leaders

The Little Foot Frame was introduced by Handi Quilter in the Autumn of 2015. When I saw it my first thought was "Brilliant!"

Why?

Lots of reasons...

Our homes in the UK are quite a bit smaller than the US where it's not unusual for homes to have basements. In the UK basements tend to be places that are damp and cold with no light that you might put some wine in or in years gone by the coal delivery. They are usually called cellars and not the kind of inviting space you want to be quilting in.

Rooms are smaller so putting a 10' or 12' frame in a standard sized bedroom can be a tight squeeze. Eviction notices sometimes get served on existing tenants (children who went away to University and inexplicably seem to have come home again - how did that happen?) but even so, it's a lot of space for a quilting frame.

Of course it's possible but how nice would it be if we could have a frame where you move the machine not the quilt, have lots of space under the free arm and can quilt a bit like your domestic and put a basted quilt on the frame and just...quilt!

Well that's what the Little Foot Frame does.

Team it up with the Simply Sixteen and you've got a lovely little package.

Here it is in the bay of a window at a customer's house. Sweet!

There are a few options for basting the quilt -

1) spray baste (we recommend 505 spray)

2) tack using thread

3) tack using basting tacks such as Micro Stitch or the Purple Basting Gun (larger tacks shown in the photo below).

4) fusible wadding such as Hobbs Heirloom Fusible which is available in Crib or Queen size.

We don't recommend that you use basting pins unless you are really diligent about removing them before you get close - you don't want to hit them with your needle. That would be bad for your machine.

We also find that putting a cloth leader on the top or sides of the frame (wherever you are working at the time) works really well. We normally have around a 4" extra margin on the wadding and backing.

How to create a cloth leader

Create a cloth leader a minimum of 6" (but preferably 10" wide) by the maximum width of the quilt. Cut a strip of fabric for the top and a strip of fabric of the same size for the bottom. Cut a similar size of wadding (preferably the same as in your quilt). Tack all three layers together using your preferred method.

Attach the "cloth leader" to your quilt top and clamp onto the Little Foot frame.

Here the gray fabric is the cloth leader.

You can see in the picture above that you can quilt right up to the edge of your quilt top. When you are done quilting that side you can cut off the tacks and reattach to the next side that you are working on.

Continue until your whole quilt is quilted. Nice.