Monale

The last 2 quilts I made, I quilted by machine and I used school glue to baste them. It went really well, no mess, kept together well, washed out with no problem. Now I'm preparing another quilt sandwich. This time, I am going to hand quilt it. Using thread to baste is such a hassle and pins didn't work well for me last time! Does anyone have experience with using glue to baste a quilt for hand quilting? Does that work?

Onebyone

I have a problem when sewing binding using the Elmer's School glue for basting and the glue is where I'm handstitching the binding down. I suggest making up a test square and try it.

ManiacQuilter2

I would not think it would work. Your hand is not as strong as the sewing machine and you may end up with a lot of bent needles. All you can do is try a test block.

Prism99

I would not glue baste for hand quilting. It would add a lot of drag to the needle.

I have heard of people ***lightly*** spray basting to hand quilt, but have not tried it myself. My thought on this is that it would work for cotton batting, but polyester batting might slip around too much. 505 or the newer Therm-o-Web would be my choices, but I would test them out on a small sandwich first to see if hand quilting is still easy.

I recommend hand basting using Sharon Schamber's method. If you don't want to use boards, you can substitute pipe insulation:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/352688214548131479/

Here are links to Sharon Schamber's basting tutorials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhwNylePFAA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_EjBGz5vGQ

Monale

Looks like maybe glue basting for hand quilting isn't such a good idea... However, thank you for that link to Sharon Schamber's method! I've watched the video and it does look so much easier to do than the crawling around the living room floor I used to do! (always ended up with a backache!) Now I only have to go and organise some boards!

EasyPeezy

Have you tried machine basting? I've done it on a wall-hanging and it
worked really well. Not sure how you'd go about doing it on a large quilt
but I think it can be done. You layer your quilt sandwich like you would
for pin basting. Then put a few pins one in the middle and then in every
corner and every middle edge. Then take the sandwich to the machine
and baste from the centre out like a big asterisk...that is, centre-North,
centre-South, centre-East, centre-West. Then centre North-East, etc.
If it's a large quilt you might want to baste large squares or rectangles
every few inches around the centre after basting the big asterisk.
Does this makes sense? Use the longest stitch on your machine and
set the tension to zero.

Genden

Everyone doesn't have space for a quilt frame, but, I found it was the solution for me. I basted one quilt for hand quilting and couldn't see myself doing it again. I don't have a place to put a floor frame. I can accommodate a Grace Z44 frame. I have a room where I can keep it against the wall all the time. It takes me about an hour to put a quilt on the frame. The only other suggestion I can make is to see if a longarm quilter will machine baste your quilt for you.

Littledreamdevil

The trick to using glue is don't put on in globs. Just drizzle or spread glue out. You can use half glue and half water. I use glue for all my projects..I never pin. I get stuck with pins or I wind up leaving a pin in my quilt and get stuck in my sleep. I hand quilt and Machine quilt and do both "basting" with glue.

Monale

As you say, I can see this working for a wall-hanging, but the quilt I'm planning to baste is at least queens's size....

Monale

Glad to hear someone IS using glue basting for hand quilting with success! Yes, I'm also drizzling, but usually non-diluted. Guess I will have to make a sample sandwich to try out!