Basting A Quilt

Still doing the charity quilts as I took more than usual home with me last time when I went to drop off the previous batch.

Thought I share my process as I do baste my quilts, charity or not, every time I prepare for quilting. As I am now back on the sitdown machine I do spent some time pinning my quilts first. Then I use the basting function on the Bernina Q20 to baste the quilt in an overall meander. There are three options on the machine...1/4in, 1/2in and 1in in terms of length of the stitch. I usually use the 1/2in option. When I say meander I mean this very loosely...basically I noodle around the pins in a somewhat meander way. At present I use older thread (Gutermann) to do this in any colour that I can see reasonably well. 

I baste at a fairly large scale, i.e. above... those little squares are about 3in, so I baste probably at an approximate 4in scale just going around the quilt starting at one quarter and then move clockwise around the quilt taking the pins out as I go along.

I also baste the edge, however for that I use the 1/4in stitch length and a ruler to keep the edge stitch at about 1/8in from the edge. 

Do I ever use the 1in stitch length? I have in the past basted a wholecloth (which I baste in a grid) with the 1in stitch length but found that I got my sewing foot caught up in it or even my fingers...just too much of a length of loose thread, so even for wholecloth quilts I now use the 1/2in stitch  length.

Why do I baste my quilts? 

- once its basted I don't have to worry about any pins (obviously) getting in my way. Easier for ruler quilting and gives me peace of mind in terms of inadvertently hitting a pin.

- any fullness which happens a lot in the charity quilts stays in its location rather than being quilted out to other areas.

- I use up older thread and leftover bobbin thread to baste.

- I can leave the quilt for years in its basted stage...nothing will shift, distort or become undone over time. Very handy, meaning I can start something completely different and more exciting if the inspiration bug strikes 😉

- I do like basting...I always think that the quilt is not really a quilt until it is fully basted.

Definitely more work but worth it in my humble opinion. Never had a pucker yet and have left quilts for a  considerable amount of time in this state not having to worry about unsightly holes from degraded pins...literally can just pick them up and go.

I have tried spray basting once. I know there are a lot of quilters who swear by that. I found it incredibly messy. I did it on the tiled floor next to the kitchen. I thought that I had used very little spray but it seemed that the spray had gotten everywhere! I mean everywhere...I obviously went into the kitchen in between several times and back again and found that I had some sticky residue all over the place. I had to wash the floor...not once, but twice to get rid of the sticky spots. That was it for me! Also did not like how the spray basting gummed up my needle while quilting. But, some people find it very easy and unproblematic to do which is fair enough.

For this little quilt above I did a simple allover loop design

Suits this little quilt which is about 48in square. Quilted with Gutermann thread which I am re-discovering after some years. Strong cotton thread at 50/3 weight behaving very nicely, no problem at all.

Well, still got two more charity quilts to do!

 

Karin

Baptist Fan Quilting...The Fearless Way!

So I continued to quilt a Baptist Fan design over one of the charity quilts using the Baptist Fan templates from Michael Quilts.

Not having done it for a while I forgot to secure my templates with some extra grip. While I have got the normal grippy things on the back of the templates, sometimes you just need a  little bit more grip. For that I use a material that one uses for drawers or sometimes under carpets. I just cut myself some small pieces that I place under the template so it does not move around as I go around the template.

I only started doing that after about the second row so my rows were already starting to be a bit out of shape. Having done this though a number of times by now I do know it will all work out in the end (that's why I called the post 'fearless quilting'). Trust your ability to fudge correctly a bit here and there to get the rows in line with the row underneath, no matter what the template points to in the current row.

I was out with most of my rows by anything up to a 1/4in which was annoying but there was not much I could do to get that exact anymore other than fudge the alignment of the template over the row. My rows were also starting to wander off to the left a bit, however that was alleviated by turning the quilt around and quilting from right to left. 

It got done though...not exact and definitely not consistent, but in the end looking at it you would not notice unless, of course, somebody comes along and follows individual fans all across the quilt. I quilted the fans in a thread colour that matched the blue/green rectangular shapes and it just blended in.

The final result...in progress

...and finished (in daylight!)

Was very happy with the outcome..the design spells consistency due to the consistent spacing of the arcs. The discrepancies from one row to the next, i.e. whether they are exactly aligned is a different matter. This design though fits this quilt really well and offsets the strong angular lines beautifully.

Always an adventure quilting the Baptist Fan over a slightly larger quilt!

Karin