Taking Care of Your Tools !

A very important lesson that my hubby taught me many years ago was to take good care of my tools. You rely on them every time you start out to ply your craft. Blessedly, his craft and mine always made a very good marriage. I relied on his woodcrafting to supply my quiltmaking with basting and quilting frames, legs to hold those frames, portable ironing boards........oh, no telling how many more things that I've forgotten as I've taken them for granted. But no more ! Hubby is temporarily (I pray) out of the woodworking line, and I MUST take care of those precious things that still remain to work with. Besides taking him for granted, I must say that I also accepted as normal having a garage where I could store all of my frames and legs and such. Now that I no longer have a garage, I've had the frame boards tied up to some nails on my little back porch, exposed to the dampness and months and months of RAIN !

I went to use them today, and found a mildewed/molded MESS. I've kindof seen it coming, but didn't want to take a good look.

Well, today, I bit the bullet and removed the staples/tacks, and the ticking from the boards, and then cleaned the boards with Pine-sol/water solution. Thankfully, four of the boards were varnished with clear polyurethane before tacking the cloth on, but all 6 boards are made of Redwood, and were well sanded. They look fine, and now that I've bleached the cloth that was on them, I can hide the old tack/staple holes when I reapply the cloth. If it has shrunken or doesn't look good when it comes out of the dryer, I'll replace it with all new cloth. I guess from now on I'll store them in my sewing room, even if their presence is awkward...........they're just too valuable a part of my quilting life, not to mention their sentimental value ! (Thanks, hubby !)

Which leads me to wonder.............what do some of you use to baste your quilts? Are you getting down in the floor, or spreading out on a large table? Are you thread-basting or pin-basting...........share your method with me please !