I'm not sure where I stumbled across the link, but last fall I found this post on the blog One Piece at a Time. Now, I haven't been quilting for that long, but I thought I had figured the basics out. When it came time to baste my quilt, I always used curved safety pins. I had heard of spray basting but thought that sounded a little too messy and expensive; I tried hand basting in the traditional circular fashion, but found it too time consuming, without much improvement over pinning. But this - this was intriguing. I bookmarked this link right away - I wanted to try it, to see if this would be faster or better, or maybe even both. I used it for the first time on the quilt I made my mom for Christmas.
And I hated it.
It seemed to take forever, the thread I used was too small and it gave me bruises on my index finger and thumb. To be fair, the quilt was twin sized and I was doing this about 3 days before Christmas.
Major crunch time.
But it kept the quilt sandwich together so well, I decided it deserved a second chance. So when it came time to baste the log cabin quilt I am currently working on for my friend Lesley, I tried it again. And you know what? I loved it. It was fast and it holds the quilt together beautifully. This time around, I used DMC pearle cotton, which I think made a big difference. I basted it in 2 sittings - just put on some tv episodes I needed to catch up on and away I went. I probably could have done it in one, but the nap is a fickle thing.
The board thing is genius. Not only does it keep everything straight and manageable on the table, but it makes it easy to roll up and put to the side to work on later. I'm pretty sure this is the way I will be doing it from now on.
Let's hear it for second chances!
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