Zippers and the longarm

Last week's post about showing how I staple my quilt back to zippers brought a lot of comments to see how I use the zippers and I'm here to please.

On the longarm, the backing is attached to rollers by canvas leaders. When I got my first longarm the only way that people did this was by pinning the backing directly to the leader and that's how I did it for years. Then some smart woman figured out that she could sew half a long zipper (like those used in sleeping bags) to the canvas and pin her backing to the other half and then easily zip the backing to the canvas. 
In this photo I have a white zipper on the canvas and my backing is stapled to a black zipper.

When I pinned toe leaders I had 3 problems:
- I had to stand over the machine to do it and that causes some back strain
- I used corsage pins and I got stuck - a lot
- If I needed to remove the quilt to work on another I had to unpin and re-pin. Zipping on and off is so much easier!

The other side of the backing has one too! 
I'm really just including this photo because I like to look at this backing fabric. It was a fabric I custom dyed for a customer and I made a mistake in one of the colors. I dyed her a new one and kept this one for myself. I love it.

I have several sets of zippers and I keep them paired properly because I've marked a center mark on each pair. When I staple the backing to the zipper I start in the center and work my way out. That way I know the quilt will stay square on the frame.

Stapling is not a very popular method of attaching backing to the zippers. Most people worry about getting a staple caught in the quilt. But do 2 things to help prevent that. I staple the back to the leaders in my sewing room on my cutting table. (This saves my back and is much easier than doing it at the machine). I remove the staples in the living room while watching TV so that keeps them away from either sewing space. I don't rip them out. I use a staple remover so I can keep up with each one.

The trick is finding the stapler. This one is a vintage Swingline that my Mom gave me and I bought a spare one in case this one dies. These are called "hand grip staplers" and you can find then where vintage things are sold, like Etsy and Ebay. I think Swingline actually still makes a "soft grip" curved stapler. You have to have the curved bottom so that it can accommodate the zipper teeth  when you press the staple in. A regular flat bottom stapler will not work. 

Staples are not required. At The Longarm Network, where I teach, they use giant safety pins. Some people still use corsage pins. Others stitch their backs to the zippers with a machine basting stitch or a chain stitch on the serger.
​Different strokes for different folks.

The biggest advantage is that I can prep several quilt backs at a time and, if I wanted, I could baste them all and then quilt them in any order. I could even zip 2 back together if I wanted to baste 2 quilts at once and then remove both and load whichever one I wanted to quilt first. 

The downside is that if I get stuck on a quilt it's rally easy to unzip it and let it sit unfinished for a year or more. That happened with my Non Unus Pluma quilt. It hung over the back of a chair using up a set of zippers for over a year before I got the nerve to finish quilting it.

There you have it. The mystery of the zippers is solved!
​People looking for a third option should check out Red Snappers. A lot of people like them too.