If you are planning to machine quilt your project, then you will want to pin baste using safety pins. Safety pins are used in pin basting because (when closed) they will stay put when maneuvering your quilt through your machine.
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If you use thread to baste your quilt sandwich, the thread can get caught on your machine and come out and you will have to rebaste. (I learned this the hard way!).
Use 1” stainless steel (no rust) safety pins for pin basting. The closer you put the safety pins, the less your quilt sandwich will move when being fed through your machine. I like to put my pins at least 3” apart. You will need a couple 100 pins to baste a small quilt. There are devices/tricks for securing the pins but I find it easiest just to use my fingers. Quilt shops sell curved safety pins that make it easier to get the pins in your quilt sandwich.
This house is ready to be quilted. I placed the safety pins close, as I think I might put a lot of quilting in this piece. First I plan on stitching in the ditch with my walking foot between the gold border and the background fabric. This allows me to “anchor” the quilt sandwich. I did not place any pins in this seam, as I will need to stitch here. Then I might stitch in the ditch around the house. If I want more quilting, I could switch to my darning foot and add stippling to the white background.
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Learn how to pin baste your quilt sandwich.
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TRANSCRIPT: Pin Basting – Encyclopedia
I’m ready to take this to my sewing machine and machine quilt this, but before I do that, I wanted to show you what it looked like when I pin based it. So before I even got to this point, I decided that I was going to not draw any sort of designs on this quilt. I was just going to do what is called “stitch in the ditch” where I take my sewing machine and I just stitch down these seam lines. I also decided that I’m going to put a different type of border on here, that this border…
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