Preparing your quilt for longarm quilting

PREPARATION OF YOUR QUILT

A few things to remember if you are going to use a longarm quilter:

• If your quilt is directional, please pin a note identifying which is the top of the quilt.  
• Your backing fabric and wadding will need to be at least 4" wider on all the sides of the overall quilt top; i.e. top, bottom, left and right sides  - so if your quilt is 60" x 60", then the backing should be 68" x 68"- see Q&A page for more details.
• Iron your quilt top; remove any stray threads so they don't show under light fabrics.  
• If you piece the backing together remember to remove any selvedge edges from the seams before stitching together with a small stitch length.  Iron the seams open and make sure they are laying flat.  
• Due to fabric drawup I cannot guarantee that any panel or specific pieced backing will be centred on the finished quilt - I do try my best but won't guarantee it.
• Please check your quilt top to make sure that there are no stray pins left in it.
• Do not stitch, pin, tack or spray glue the quilt together into a quilt sandwich.  The backing fabric, wadding and quilt top are loaded onto my longarm frame separately.
• If you are posting your quilt, please make sure that it is insured.  You are responsible for all postage and insurance costs including return postage.
• When packing up your quilt for postage I strongly suggest wrapping it in some sort of protective covering, just in case it is comes into contact with anything wet on its postal journey.  I would suggest putting your address details inside the packaging as well as writing them on the outside - just in case something goes astray.  I would also suggest that you do NOT use black bin bags.  If your package goes astray, someone finding a black bin bag will automatically think it is rubbish - use white bin bags instead.