How to Pin Baste a Quilt

I really, really enjoy machine quilting, but the basting part isn't one of my favorite things to do. I really don't like using safety pins, they're a little hard on my hands and they get caught on the foot of my machine. So several years ago, I started using straight pins. So I wanna show you how to do some straight pin basting so that you can get a really tight baste and therefore end up with a really nice end result with your machine quilting. You can see that this little piece here has been basted with straight pins. And I try to keep my pins about every two inches or so on a quilt that's really important to me, that way I've got everything held together really nicely and I know that I'm not gonna get a lot of shifting in the three layers. So for basting, what we need is some good sticky masking tape. Some of the masking tape these days isn't all that sticky, but it needs to be good and sticky, or you can use really large binder clips if you have a narrow table that you can hook them onto. You'll also need some good straight silk pins. There are a lot of pins out there that call themselves silk pins, but very few of them are as sharp and as long and as thin as you really want them to be. Look for ones that have a little tiny metal head that are at least an inch and 1/4 long and are very, very thin. My two favorite brands are Iris, I-R-I-S, and IBC, the initials I-B-C. You can expect to pay quite a bit more for these pins than you would for regular cheap pins, but they're really worth it. So in addition to that tape and pins, you'll need your quilt top and your quilt backing and your batting. So let me show you how I baste for machine quilting. The first thing I do is I tape down the backing. Now, some people think this is necessary and some people don't. I like to tape down the backing so that the back is quite taut, but not so taut that I've pulled it out of its width-wise or length-wise grain. I start by putting the tape on the corners of the fabric only. I don't stick it to the tabletop yet. And then I work from two corners. So I'll pull two corners slightly taut and then push the tape down, and then go to the opposite corners. And again, I'm going to pull it tautly, but I'm not gonna pull it out of grain. Now, you're probably saying, "Well, that's a little tiny quilt she's gonna baste." And my quilts are a lot bigger than this. Well, you can do the same thing with anything up to about a throw size quilt. If it's a bed quilt, you're gonna do the same exact way of making the back taut, but you can use tape on tables that are pushed together or you can actually do it on a kitchen floor or something like that. Once the back is stretched tautly, then we're gonna put on our backing or, excuse me, our batting, and just make sure that it's nice and smooth on the backing. And then smooth and center your quilt top on top of that. At this point, because the backing is a little bit taut, it can be a little hard to get the pin through in the beginning, but there's a really easy way of doing it. You wanna push the pin so it sort of drags along the table underneath and then put a finger in front of the pin, which will help you push the tip out. So you can see here that I've got quite a bit of the pin inside the fabric. Once I've done that, I'm gonna tuck the tip back into the batting so that that tip doesn't scratch me all the time. So let me show you again, pin all the way in, take the tip out and then tuck the tip into the batting. Again about two inches apart, and it really doesn't matter what direction the pins are going in. It's just whatever direction is easy for your hand to move in. When you're done, you'll have this, and you're ready to start quilting. Now, if I'm basting a really large quilt, what I do is I pin baste with the straight pins the portion I'm going to quilt first, and that portion is usually about at the most three foot square. Then the outside edges of it, I put big safety pins in. Then when I'm finished quilting that pinned area, I take the pins out and pin the area that I'm gonna quilt next, that way I don't have to deal with so many pins. Hopefully the next time you're getting ready to baste a quilt for quilting, you'll try these straight pins. I think you'll really enjoy the process.