Simone recently encouraged me into the quilt-stand/frame-buying business, and since she’d done the bulk of the research, I joined her online (me, at my computer and she, at her computer) to figure out the final decision.  She was in charge of the display for our church’s talent show (above) and asked to have one of my quilts displayed in it.  But I had to have a quilt stand/frame to do so.

We both purchased the Emart Photo Video Studio Backdrop Stand, with a 10 x 12 ft dimension.  We went for this one because the tubes were a thicker diameter than other ones checked, and we liked the clamps.  (I am not an Amazon affiliate, so no pocket change is coming my way on this recommendation.)

I’m putting these for my husband so he knows the right kind of clamps to get to help out Santa with stocking stuffers.  (Honey, I’d like about four, please.)

I was headed out of town, so I had it shipped to Simone’s house, and she sent me photos of the display.  She’s lovely like that.

Simone and I have a running joke about photos.  Both she and I have asked other people to send us photos of our quilts in different shows we couldn’t be to, and invariably the photos come back like this:

It’s our quilt, but cropped and showing no context of the show it was in.  I always say thank you.  If someone is nice enough to go and hunt up your quilt, and take the time and make the effort to send you a photo, you don’t say anything but “Thank you.”  However, as Simone and I comiserated, we do know what our quilts looks like — we were hoping to see what they looked like in the show.

So when I was standing on the subway platform of the Wall Street Subway station, exhausted after a day of tramping around, feeling rather dour, I burst out laughing when she sent me the above photo, with this caption:

It looks awesome! Don’t you love it?!!!

My daughter was like, “What?  What’s so funny?” and I tried to explain it to her, but I could clearly see she lost interest after the first nanosecond and however do you explain quilter’s jokes to a non-quilter?

So anyway, the quilt stand/frame worked great, and I tried it out:

I put it up by myself and took it down by myself, and if you’ve never used a quilt stand, the trick is to set up the legs, then insert the side supports, then thread (or clamp) the quilt onto the cross bar, and only THEN do you raise the cross bar higher by means of the adjustments on the side.

I like that the case has places for the two tripod-legs, and loops for each of the bars (you have four, so you can get that twelve-foot width; I only used three of the four today).  The top really zippers open, so you can lay it out to unpack all the parts.

It’s also fairly lightweight and easy to carry in its own sturdy case. The best news is that it’s a reasonable price: $69.49 as of December 2018.  I do now feel very grown up, with my very own quilt stand.