Quilting Buddy

Quilting Buddy came into being when I , a non quilter, decided to make a quilt for my injured hubby. I purchased one of those 4 slat quilting frames that was about 100 years old and absolutely hated it. After 4 years of fighting with that old frame I finally finished my first quilt and knew that my next one was definitely not going to be quilted on that frame. I played around with ideas and then made the little plastic prototype pictured above.

Step 1: Quilting Buddy Disassembled.

This is how much room the Quilting Buddy needs when it is dismantled. Not much at all .

Step 2: Quilting Buddy With 8 Foot Rails Installed.

Surprisingly I was able to make all the pieces I needed from one 4 by 8 sheet of lumber. That included 2 sets of rails, 4 of them 8 feet long and 4 of them 4 feet long for different size quilts.Not knowing much about lumber I chose medium density fiberboard to make it. It looks great but the rails don't have the strength of hardwood .The above pic shows the wooden parts of the frame assembled. The ends will stand up on their own so one person can set it up and take it down without the frame falling over on my feet..

Step 3: Quilting Buddy Inside End View.

In my plans I changed the MDF (med density fiberboard) to plywood, a much better choice for this project. The above pic is of the inside of one end of the frame with the rounded brackets to hold a rope with the fabric pieces to pin the ends of the quilt to and hold it taut.

Step 4: Quilting Buddy Outside End View With Castors.

I then put castors on the ends so I could move it easily once I had it assembled.

Step 5: Quilting Buddy With 2 Projects .

I found that if I have a quilt in progress and I want to work on another project I can roll the first one to one side and set up the second project on the other side. Bonus!

Step 6: Quilting Buddy With Quilt in Progress .

This is my finished Quilting Buddy loaded with my current project. I can lay the quilt flat to hand quilt it or I can quilt at an angle. It is set up at an angle here. I then made a PDF of my project and managed to sell a few copies of my plans to other quilters. It cost me around $50 CAD to build this. That included the lumber, brackets, rope and castors.