Layering and Basting

Groan....This morning I put the final border of a twin-sized quilt for my 2011 quilt class, Barns and Hexes and Stars, Oh My!. We just had the first class this past week end so I am definitely feeling enthused about completing the quilt.

After I sewed on the border, I decided to go ahead and put the layers together and baste. This is not an easy task for anyone, but I only have a small table to work on so I have to do a lot of repositioning, which of course makes it take even longer.

How do you baste your quilts? Some people like to do it with needle and thread while others use a basting gun and plastic ties. Me, I use curved pins for basting and then I remove them as I quilt.

Although I love the look of hand-quilting, I do not have the skills nor the patience for hand-quilting -- I am a free motion quilter. For this quilt I am thinking of doing an allover design for the center and then two different border designs to frame the center. I am particularly fond of allover designs.

I do not have a long arm machine -- I machine quilt using my Janome 6260. It does what I ask it to and does it well. Who said you have to have a fancy-shmancy machine to do free motion machine quilting? The sewing machine manufacturers would like you to think that, but what you need is a reliable machine with a nice even stitch and the ability to drop your feed dogs. The rest all depends on you, the quilter. One last word of advice if you are interested in free motion quilting: PRACTICE.