Five Ways to Baste a Quilt
Basting is an essential part of making a quilt, but I don’t know many quilters who enjoy it.
Basting can be tedious, time-consuming, and difficult to get just right. If it goes wrong, you can end up with the heartbreak of wrinkles on your quilt. But it’s a step you can’t skip, and some ways of basting are definitely faster and easier than others.
This post gives you a quick look at all five methods, with links to step-by-step tutorials that tell you exactly how to do each method.
Five ways to baste a quilt
Each way of basting is worth trying at least once to see which method works best for you. Click or tap on the links to see detailed tutorials for each method.
- Pin basting, where you secure the quilt layers together with oversized safety pins.
- Spray basting, where you glue the layers together with wash-away spray glue. (This is my personal favorite.)
- Basting with a quilter’s tack gun.
- Hand stitching the layers together. Here’s a video overview of hand basting by Sharon Schamber.
Hand-based baby quilt by Stephanie Vacher, Flickr. - Basting with fusible batting.It’s worth trying all five basting techniques to see which one works best for you.
I have used all three of these basting techniques and still return to good old fashioned pinning most of the time. The one time I used the basting gun, it broke before finishing a twin sized quilt. I returned it for a second one and it broke as well. I found it frustrating to use to with having a hit or miss in getting it through all three layers. The basting pins from the gun look like the plastic pins used to attach price tags to clothing. An retail clothing version of the gun might be better suited for the task.
I only use the fusible batting with small wall quilts. I have used the spray on up to a twin sized quilt. But as you mentioned above, had difficulty with positioning on anything larger.
I just ran out of my can of basting spray, so it was back to pinning on my most recent quilt, a (belated) Christmas tree wall hanging. Heidi, thanks for the use of your beautiful photographs. I love your quilts and your fabric color choices!