How To Extend Your Quilting Work Space.

Hey everyone! Welcome to another Technique Tuesday.  Things got a bit hectic around here at the start of this week with two workshops on Monday, so this is really Technique-Tuesday-on-Wednesday.

Today we are talking about how to extend your work space when quilting a quilt – to be even with your sewing machine height as well as extend beyond the table.

There is nothing worse than a quilt getting caught up over the edge of the table when I am quilting it and the stitches all become tiny, tight little things that if I had to rip them out would take forever and a day and require a magnifying glass to see them.  I am sure you all know what I am talking about and have been there.

Now the ideal situation would be a large sewing table that my machine drops into and sits flush with the table but unfortunately I do not have that luxury so I had to come up with something else

When living in Australia I discovered that all of my little rubbermaid containers and my thread containers were the same height as my sewing machine and the extension table I have for it – bonus.  Now I could have a level sewing area and keep my quilts from dragging and getting caught up on the edge of the machine and table.

Now, whenever I get ready to quilt, I get all my little containers out of the cupboard and place them around the sewing machine – a bit of a pain to take them out of the cupboard and put them back when I am finished with them but well worth the effort I must say.  Maybe someday my husband will build me an extension table for my sewing machine that covers my whole table – I won’t hold my breath while I wait as I would probably turn blue but I will keep on dreaming about it.

Once the table surface had been fixed I realised that I also needed an extension to the table beside me.  Nothing worse than a queen size quilt sitting in your lap.  I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of using the ironing board for this but it does work if that is all you have, instead I stacked up 3 rubbermaid bins – two large and one of the small ones.  A perfect extension beyond the table to hold the excess quilt.  At times I even extend the table across from the sewing machine this way especially if I am working on a very large piece.

Notice how the quilt is now supported by the boxes stacked beside me.

I hope this little hint and tip will help to make your quilting experiences much smoother.

Until next week, happy quilting.