woody

DITTO I do the same

Katia

I have done both all pins or all spray baste, and both. But I recently got one of those little guns that shoot a super thin plastic thing through the whole quilt. Sorta like what hold a tag to knew clothes. Only much much smaller. I loved it. No shifting and stopping to pull out safety pins or mess from over spray. The hardest part was going over the quilt and finding all the little things to get them out. Silly me didn't use a contrast color.

ckcowl

when i am working on something small i am going to quilt on my domestic-instead of the long arm i thread baste- i also thread baste if hand quilting- i do not like the sprays- have not had alot of luck with them and find dealing with the pins is much more time consuming and well--- a pain, so i thread up a big needle & baste my quilt the way my grandmother taught me oh so long ago- it has always worked well for me & is very easy/quick to remove---with no sticky oversprays or hard pins to deal with

Merivale

If I am hand quilting I pin baste, if I am machine quilting I spray baste with a few pins around the edge. Hope this helps. Keep trying different methods till you find what what suits you. No doubt in the not too distant future a new method will come up that is great for some and not for others.

117becca

I'm a thread baster, don't really have anywhere to do a spray basting. I am a handquilter and it does use up all that embroidery floss that I used to use when i did counted cross-stitch.

pinkberrykay

I just started spray basting and I am loving it. I got so tired of my hands looking like I raked them thru a blackberry bush and pin covers weren't working. Spray basting is so easy to do and my sandwich stay in place!!

Buckeye Rose

Spray baste....always.....I use Dritz and have great results.....I wash at the end to get rid of any dirt, chemicals, starch and to make those little oops become visible, so the basting washes out anyway.....spray basting is by far the easiest way for me (no more sore knees from pinning on the floor) ....I spread out an old flat sheet on the bed to catch overspray and do it there.....best tip I can give for basting spray is to spray lightly - helps prevent needle gumming and it really doesn't take that much to keep all the layers together.

DogHouseMom

I've always hand basted with the quilt taped to the floor. Then I discovered (courtesy of QB) the Sharon Shamber video of using boards to hand baste, so I've done my last two quilts with that method (only difference being I have always basted with water soluble thread). Then, also courtesy of QB, I found info about spray basting. I happened to have a can of Duro All Purpose Adhesive spray (which is NOT the 505 spray that everyone recommends, but I was only doing a 12" practice sandwich to practice a quilt motif) that I use to stick my hand drawn quilting motif templates to the quilt, and I tried that on some practice quilt sandwiches and I liked it!! It adhered well, but was easy enough to pull up to reposition if needed, didn't gum the machine, and washed out.

If I ever spray baste a large quilt though I'm going to have to either take it to my husbands shop, or wait for a day without wind. I don't like the idea of using spray inside the house in large quantities that a large quilt would require.

The advantage of hand basting with water soluble thread using the boards is that you get a very straight quilt, no puckers at all, nice and tight (but not too tight), you can do it sitting down (yippee!!), and you don't have to pull pins out or clip threads as you quilt (because I use water soluble - the threads disappear when I wash the quilt). Once in a while my foot will catch a thread, in which case I will snip it, but I don't have to the pull the threads through. The disadvantage is still the fact that I have to hand baste (I hate hand work).

The advantage of spray basting is all of the above with the exception that there are no threads to get in the way, and you don't have to hand baste. You can baste a quilt in half the time (or less). The disadvantage is the space it requires to hang a quilt that large to baste, and the smell of using that much spray indoors, and the fact that you have to cover the surrounding area with newspaper to catch over spray. If you could hang the quilt on the side of a barn on a windless day ... PERFECT.

Have never, and will never use pins. I don't like the idea of stopping and removing pins every so many inches while quilting.

azwendyg

I used to hand baste using Sharon Schamber's method with boards. The last several large quilts I've done by spray basting with 505 using the same method. The boards help to layer my quilt evenly across a couple of folding tables, and the spray is soooo much faster, and easier on the fingers! It is a bit messy, but even with cleanup time, it's so much faster. I love the way the quilt sandwich stays together for FMQ on my domestic machine. Even the extra large queen size quilts do not shift even a little bit with all the wrestling around to quilt them!

My daughter was here last week and we spray basted 2 queen size and 3 throw/twin size easily in a day. (We even had time for a trip to the LQS.)

texasmom

I'm interested in the Elmer's Glue method, too. Please tell us more. texasmom