Assembly

 First lay out the quilt back wrong side up on a clean, hard surface. Use masking tape to tape the back to the floor, stretching it so that all the wrinkles are flattened.   (It helps to have a surface with lines like this tiled floor to make sure the fabric is straight.)   If the backing has a pattern, check twice to make sure which is the top edge.  (This step took 15 minutes.)

I was able to use a conference room at the Glass Center while Duane played pickleball in the gym across the hall.

Next, lay the batting on the quilt back, smoothing out all of the folds and wrinkles.  Trim the edges to within an inch or two of the edge.  

Carefully place the quilt top over the batting and back, gently smoothing all of the wrinkles and making sure that the edges meet.  Make sure the top of the quilt is on the same edge as the top of the backing.  (These two steps took another 15 minutes.)

Notice that the black-capped chickadees, the only piece with a "right way up" is upside down.  Turn the top around and smooth it again.

The last and most tiring step is to use bent safety pins to fasten the three pieces together.  (This step took 2 1/2 hours before I ran out of pins.)

Use all the pins because they keep the fabric from shifting out of shape and making little puckers and folds on the back when you're sewing.  

Since this quilt was assembled on the floor, I lay out on my stomach or used Yoga's Child's Pose.  It's a good thing I'm very limber.

There are two more steps to this process:  the quilting, which is sewing the three pieces together in some sort of design, and the binding, which finishes the raw edges.

That's a project for another day.

Louise (and Duane)