Pin Basting Tutorial
In the world of quilting, there are multiple ways to do everything. Most of us have tried them all. In the world of basting, I know of 4 ways to baste (spray, pins, thread, and glue) though I'm sure there's more! So when I was learning to quilt, I started with what seemed easiest, spray basting. And I spray basted for years, but over time some things changed. The spray recipe I was using changed and it got both stickier and smellier. Plus its expensive and I was beginning to ramp up the number of quilts I was making. So the budget friendly option became pins. It's taken me a while to build my confidence with the pin basting method, but now I feel like a pro. The average throw size quilt takes me about 45 minutes to baste- not too bad in my opinion!
Materials
- Curved safety pins. I use these from Dritz. 300 pins will allow me to baste about 2 throw size quilts or one bed size quilt. Also, they're way cheaper online vs in a big box store!
- Painters tape. I use 2" wide blue painters tape. It's strong enough to hold but won't damage my floor.
- Something to close your pins with. I use a whisk attachment from my hand mixer, but you can also buy a qwik clip meant for this exact purpose.
- Batting. I use whatever I can get on sale. Some of my favorites are Hobbs 80/20 or Pellon Nature's Touch 100% cotton batting.
- You'll also need your well pressed quilt top and your pieced backing. I often use thrifted bedsheets for quilt backings which means no piecing! Just make sure to wash your bedsheet first.
Step 1: CLEAN YOUR FLOOR! Don't skip this one. Seriously.
Step 2: Lay your quilt backing right sides down on the floor. Use your blue tape to pull the fabric snug, but not stretched. I am using a bedsheet for this quilt.
It's very important in this stage to KEEP THE DOGS OFF THE QUILT SANDWICH! Well, really it's important to keep them off at all stages, even if they think they're being good helpers.
Step 5: Put on a good tv show. You'll be on the floor for a little while, so you might as well watch something to keep you entertained! Unfortunately, I was stuck watching a webinar for work. But it was a good use of my time to get this quilt basted while I listened to someone else talk.
Step 6: Start pinning. I sit in the middle of my quilt, dump a pile of pins between my legs and start pinning. The key here is to put your pins in but don't close them yet! We'll do that at the end. Just start pinning and smoothing the quilt top as you go. Working from the center towards the outside helps to avoid any wrinkles and puckers. The general rule of thumb for spacing your pins is every 4 inches or so. Basically, if you put your hand down and spread your fingers, you should hit at least 2 pins every time. It may seem like an odd thing at first to pin your quilt top. I will slide my pins in at an angle, making sure I touch the floor, then I'll angle them back up and out the other side. You might not grab a ton of your backing fabric with each pin, but that's ok!
In order to make this process methodical but mindless, I'll determine where on each block I want to pin, then I know to repeat that as I move across the quilt top. For this quilt, I pinned in each of the 4 sides of the large quarter square triangle (QST) blocks and in the middle of the small QST blocks. This spacing ends up working well for my 4" spacing rule.
You can see in the picture above that my pins are in the quilt top, but I haven't closed them yet.
Step 7: Close those pins! Once you've pinned the whole top, you'll need to grab your pin closing tool. As I mentioned above, I use the back of my whisk attachment for my hand mixer. It has a little groove in the end that hooks nicely under the point of the safety pin to help me close them. The qwik clip is also an option! See how I rest the groove of the whisk under the edge of the pin, then I use my other hand to push the top of the pin over and hook it closed. This part goes pretty fast!
Step 8: Once all your pins are closed, you can remove your basted quilt from the floor. Cut off any excess batting and backing (keeping your 2-3" overlap) to avoid extra bulk while you quilt. The nice thing about pin basting, is that any extra batting or backing scraps aren't sticky from spray baste, so you can totally reuse them in another project!
Quilt and bind as desired!
I have some other tutorials for quilting to give you some inspiration. This quilt was pretty simple, so I just did some straight line quilting to finish it off with a fun teal thread. I choose a pink binding and machine stitched that as well.
The Finished Quilt
Here are some images of the finished product. I love the way this quilt turned out!
Purchase the pattern!
Would you like to make your own gorgeous Quick QST Quilt? The pattern is available for purchase as a PDF download on my website! The pattern comes with directions to make this quilt in 2 sizes (large and small throw). The quilt in this tutorial is the large throw size. The pattern uses 10" layer cake packs and sews up really fast! You'll want to make this pattern again and again.
I'd love to see the beautiful quilts that you make! Thanks for stopping by. If you have questions about this tutorial, or want to share your quilts using this idea, please share below in the comments.
Happy Sewing!
- Erin
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