Making a sandwich

You've probably guessed by now when I say making a sandwich I am not talking about corned beef on rye (one of my favorites) but about a fabric sandwich.  This quilt is slightly wider than the width of the fabric (darn) so this means the quilt back will need to be assembled.  How I ended up doing it is to have the salvages running along the width of the quilt and the seam is aprox. 13 " from the end.  Photo #1 shows the end piece of fabric being cut to size. The two backing pieces are then attached and the seam pressed.  Next I then laid the backing out, WRONG side up and taped it with masking tape in the corners. This will keep it from shifting when I put the batting on top of it.  After the batting is smoothed out, the top layer is placed on top and that is smoothed out.  It is important at this step to take care to smooth ALL the bumps and wrinkles from ALL the layers.  The second photo shows all three layers together.  I peeled a corner back so it would be easier to see.  I also did not crop out the wood stove for atmosphere.  YES, one is toasty warm when working at MY cutting table.  Before quilts get quilted they need to be basted to keep the layers from shifting during quilting.  If one is having a quilt sent out to be machine quilted then NO, you don't baste it but if it is being hand quilted OR quilted on a regular old sewing machine, this is a must.  There are as many ways to baste a quilt as there is to skin a cat....I have tried them all.  I now use basting spray.  Like everything else, quilting spray has changed since I first started using it.  It has improved.  It is now orderless, acid free and there are no fluorocarbons. I always spray the adhesive on the batting once I have peeled back the fabric.  I do the quilt top first, flip it over and at this point there are always a few more wrinkles, smooth them out and re-lift things if necessary and then adhere the making to the batting.  It is now time to figure out what pattern (if any) to quilt on this, and what color thread to use or to use nylon thread which makes the quilting virtually invisible, but that is a decision for another day.