Basting your Quilts

What is basting anyway, and why is it important? When you quilt your quilts, you’re sewing through all three layers of your quilt. The quilting is pretty, but it’s also functional. These stitches hold the three layers together and help keep your batting from breaking apart and wadding up on you over time as you wash the quilt. These stitches also share the load of holding the three layers (top, batting, and backing) together. More quilting = less load on each individual stitch = a more durable quilt, but this also means a stiffer quilt. Less quilting = more load on each individual stitch = a less durable quilt, but this also means a softer and flowier quilt. I talk a little bit about all of this in my post on How to Choose your Quilting Design.

In the picture above, you can see my Pinwheel Poppers quilt before I trimmed the extra batting away put on the binding. Just a little quick side note on Pinwheel Poppers. I wrote that for Southern Charm Quilts’ resource library. That pattern can be yours for the low, low price of FREE. You can get it right in your inbox from HERE. I got all the fabrics for that quilt from her shop. She has several fabric lines that she designed. You can check out her shop and see what beautiful fabrics she currently has in stock HERE (affiliate link).

If you’re going to send your quilts off to a longarmer to be quilted, they’ll load it into a frame to keep those layers staying put so that they can sew through all three layers of your quilt/quilting it for you. If you’re going to quilt it yourself on your domestic machine, you have keep those layers together somehow so you can move them in unision through your machine while you sew through all three layers. This is called basting. If you don’t baste or dont do a good job of basting, you’ll end up with fabrics on the top or backing folding over where you dont want it to. You may also have some weirdness from the fabric puckering. Accidental tucks, folds, and puckers are not what you want in your finished quilts. So, lets talk about some options you have for basting. For this article, I’m only going to talk about methods I’ve actually tried. There are a few I’ll mention just so you know they exist, but I won’t be able to get into them much. If I leave out ir don’t say much about your way of basting, it doesn’t mean I think you are doing it “wrong”, and we can still be friends.

Adhesive vs Non-Adhesive basting methods

Every basting method I’ve ever encountered will fall into of those two categeries. Did you use some sort of adhesive to hold the layers together or not? For adhesive basting, I think most quilters think of basting spray. But, there are other things you can use to stick those layers together. For non-adhesive basting, no post on basting would be complete without talking about pin basting. I’ve been playing with a different kind of non-adhesive basting lately that I’ll talk about in this post. All methods have advantages and disadvantages.

Pin Basting

This is probably still the most common basting method. Most people use safety pins, but I’ve also seen some quilters use straight pins with a stopper on one end to hold everything in place.

This method can be relaxing or it can be tedious depending on how you frame it. On the one hand, yes it is a lot slower than spray basting. I make a LOT of quilts, and all the pinning definetly slows me down. I don’t usually mind the actual pinning part. Sometimes a mindlessly relaxing task is what I need to slow down and unwind a little in the middle of a busy schedule. That would be the positive way to frame it, but the other side is that I have a long list of quilts to make, and pinning means I’m spending way too much time on one quilt. If you leave your pins open after you remove them from the quilt, it will save you a little time as you baste because you won’t have to open them up. This doesn’t sound like much, but over a whole quilt it adds up.

It also slows down my free motion quilt a LOT. Constantly having to stop quilting to remove the pins kills my quilting rhythm. It also makes it a little harder to get smooth lines and curves in your free motion quilting. It does take some practice to be able to stop and restart while still keeping your lines smooth. It is easier to restart smoothly from the straight part of a design than it is from a curve. So, keep that in mind while you’re still learning free motion quilting. All of that isn’t as big of a deal for straightline quilting.

Some advantages with pins are cost effectiveness and lack of fumes. Pinning is cost effective because you can reuse the pins over and over again. I’ve had to throw away a few pins here and there that I wore out, but I’ve had those same pins without buying anymore for years. With adhesive bastings, they are meant to be temporary. They hold your quilt together so you can quilt it. Once your quilt is finished, the adhesive along with any money you spent on that adhesive gets washed away the first time you wash your quilt. The lack of fumes comes in handy for anyone who has asthma or allergies. The aerosal in the spray basting cans isn’t exactly asthma friendly. The spray also can be messy so you have to be more careful with that compared to pins that don’t make a mess.

Quiltak basting system

This is another non-adhesive basting method that I’ve been playing with recently. I have been calling it a tack gun. When Mr. SnuggleBugStitching asked me if I wanted anything for Mother’s Day, I told him I was planning to buy myself a tack gun for basting. These are basically the little guns that clothing stores use to put those little plastic things with the price tags on them into the clothes. I haven’t really seen good reviews for any of them except for the one by Quiltak. You can get this basting gun HERE.

I’ve been playing with this one for a few weeks, and I’ve basted 3 quilts with it. Here’s what I’ve found with this one. The basting part is MUCH faster than pinning, and those tiny little plastic things hold just as well as the pins. Another thing I liked is that unlike safety pins, the little plastic things are small enough that I can ignore them and just quilt around them so that I don’t have to break my quilting rhythm by constantly having to stop and start to remove them. Once the quilting is done, the basting tacks take just as long to remove as the pins, but I don’t mind this as much after the quilting since it’s not breaking my quilting rhythm.

A few concerns I had about this quilt basting gun prior to trying it:
1) I was worried those tiny pieces of plastic couldn’t hold up to keeping layers of a heavy t-shirt quilt together.
2) I was worried I’d stick that large needle into my fingers by accident.
In practice, the plastic tacks held up fine. I have basted a t-shirt quilt with these, and I didn’t have any issues with them not being sturdy enough to keep the layers held together. As far as poking myself with the quilt gun, I haven’t done that yet. Just like with pins, you need to take your time and be careful not to poke yourself.

Spray Basting

I waited a long time about trying spray basting. I was afraid it wouldn’t hold well enough and the layers would shift while I was trying to quilt. I worried about the mess from overspray. You do have to be careful to not make a mess, but it turns out I was wrong about the shifting. The spray baste actually held the layers together really well with no shifting. It’s also way faster than pin basting, and once you’re finished quilting there’s nothing to have to remove. You can just move on to binding. Not all basting sprays are created equally. So, you may need to try a few brands before you find the one that works best for you.

There are some batting that recommend avoiding adhesive basting for that specific batting. Warm and Plush batting is a 100% cotton batting with a lot more loft than most cotton battings. It doesn’t have any scrim. The specs say you shouldn’t use basting spray because repositioning the top and backing can pull the cotton apart. I did an experiment where I tried adhesive basting with this batting, basically disregarding these instructions, and I still got good results. You can read that post HERE.

Glue Basting

Most of the time when people talk about glue basting, they are talking about the white Elmer’s School Glue. It’s a lot quicker than pinning, and you can buy it by the gallon so that it’s very cost effective for a basting adhesive. This is what I used the first time I tried glue basting. I used this to baste Watermelon Quilt #3. A few things I was concerned about was the glue gumming up the needle and it not holding well. Both of those things ended up being fine. One thing I didn’t like as much about this is that it had to dry overnight. So, I couldn’t start quilting right away after I finished basting.

I actually like to use glue sticks a lot more than the white school glue. Basting with glue sticks is actually my favorite way to baste. It dries quickly and doesn’t dry hard like the white glue. So, you can start quilting right after you finish basting. The disappearing purple glue is awesome because it dries clear. So if you aren’t moving quickly enough and the glue dries, you can tell when you need to reapply. I’ve tried the Elmer’s Washable glue sticks and the Target brand washable glue sticks, and both work great. Bigger glue sticks are always better for basting because the little glue sticks just get used up too fast, but the smaller glue sticks do have their place in the sewing room too. I use the smaller glue sticks for binding and to glue down the occasional applique project.

Another glue stick I’ve been using recently is the Darice XL Glue Sticks (affiliate link). These are the biggest glue sticks I’ve ever seen. I was buying glue on amazon and saw these HUGE glue sticks. They aren’t the disappearing purple that I know and love, but I couldn’t resist trying them just because of the massive size. You can see me holding one of those glue sticks in the photo below. I’ve basted several quilts with this glue. So, here’s what I’ve found so far with using these glue sticks.

They hold just as well, maybe even a little better than the other glue sticks I’ve tried. The glue does wash out in the wash just like the other brands. This surprised me, but I didn’t miss the disappearing purple as much as I thought I would. So, I’d give this one a thumbs up. You can get them HERE (affiliate links) in packs of 6 glue sticks. Whatever glue sticks you decide to try, be sure to get the washable school glue.

You can see my demo on basting with glue sticks HERE.

Where to baste

Where you lay your layers out to baste makes a big difference. You can always tape your backing to the floor to secure it and baste on the floor. I do this from time to time with really big quilts, but it’s definitely the least friendly on the knees. Some people like to use a large kitchen table. I like to use the bed to baste the quilts. I have a king size foam mattress. So, it’s a large work surface. I also find that the texture of the foam matters helps keep the layers pull taught and keep them from wrinkling up compared with basting on a hard surface. I’d recommend trying methods until you find one that you like.

A few methods I haven’t tried

It’s worth mentioning wall basting. I haven’t ever done this so I can’t say much about it other than it looks like a great technique. So, if you have a design wall, this basting method is worth trying.

Another method I’ve never tried is thread basting. I actually like to quilt with my feed dogs left up (more on that when I do the post on quilting). So, I’ve always worried about the potential for the big loose basting stitching getting caught in the feed dogs. I’m not sure if there’s anything to this fear, but I’ve never tried to be able to say if it would be an issue or not.