Basting on the Q20

I love basting on the Q20 and have been using this function extensively.

One of the things I find extraordinarily useful is the programming that is possible for the Q20. It has five slots to occupy for different thread combinations that you use all the time. 

Here are the ones that I use most with Gutermann highlighted as I put this in as a new preset. Feeling a bit frugal at the moment and decided to use some of my older threads to baste my quilts to use them up. So I decided to use the old Gutermann thread. Must admit I am not one to believe that my machine loves a particular thread like I so often read in the various quilting groups. To me it is a machine and it needs to handle whatever I throw at it from very fine 100wt Invisafil thread to the more robust 40 TEX Rasant thread. Opening the slots will show you the settings that you have set, i.e. the setting for each of the modes (BSR1 - 3 plus Manual mode. With a bit of adjustment and tweaking I set up my machine for Gutermann thread the other day so that when I come to do some basting next time I only will need to hit the program button to select Gutermann and it will set itself to the settings that I have selected. Very handy! The only thing that has happened to me from time to time is that I forget to switch programs and for example quilt with Aurifil 50/2 thread at a setting for Rasant. 

I have a short video on how to baste on the Q20 on Pinterest if you are interested. Basically I just meander over the entire quilt stitching (carefully) around my pins and taking them out as I go along. I do use a highly visible colour in order to prevent accidentally ripping into my quilting when I take the basting stitch out. The basting has 3 different options on the machine, 1in,2in and 1/4in. I use the 1/2in option for the overall meander and the 1/4in feature to secure the edges of the quilt.

For my current quilt, which is a gorgeous little quilt from the Orange Tree Quilters charity group, I used a lime green thread instead of my usual red thread as there is a lot of red colour in the quilt.

The basting is very quick, in fact this was so easy to complete I basted another one of my quilts straight after. Once basted I can leave the quilt sitting around until I am ready to do the quilting. Nothing will move, the basting keeps everything nicely secured.

Another background quilting project coming up for which I will use Invisafil thread.

Felt very frugal this week as I also stitched some batting together to make one bigger piece for another quilt. Had lots of little leftovers though and spent some time to sew them all together. Made quite a sizable piece.

This will be for practice only as I sewed them together fairly roughly and also did not concern myself too much with the different quality of the batting. It's amazing though how much you can save by just sewing strips together. This will give me two decently sized practice bits.

Happy quilting!

Karin