I had two baby quilt tops that had been sitting in my sewing room for almost year, waiting to be quilted. I had limited time on the long arm machine this weekend so my mom suggested loading both on the machine frame to speed up the process. I was skeptical at first, but I thought I’d give a try. Here’s what I did: I sewed the backings together. They each had about six inches to play with on the length so I wasn’t too worried about losing some fabric to the seam. I basted the two tops together so I could separate them on the frame.

I loaded the backing and double-top onto the frame. I think my math was non-functional when I made the first backing, so it was the same width as the quilt top. To make sure these lined up, I loaded everything so that this quilt would be done first and had to be extra careful of the edges.

The bungee clips got in the way a lot, so I will probably trim these edges about an inch so that it looks nice. I proceeded to quilt as normal until I got to the end. At this point, I took out the basting and rolled the second quilt back out of the way and finished quilting the first top.

From here, it was easy since all I had to do was pin the second quilt and continue the machine quilting as if it was the only one on the frame.

A few hours after loading both quilt, I was finished and had one mega-baby quilt!

All that’s left to do now is to trim the excess fabric and batting and bind the edges. I do think it was quite a bit faster, and it’s nice to set up the machine once and keep working through. I promised to credit my mom (Michèle) – so thanks for the time-saving idea, Mom! I will definitely be doing this again!

Emily

p.s. These quilts are numbers 19 and 20 tops completed on the long arm machine since we got it last summer!