Quilting 101: How to Prepare a Quilt Backing and Baste a Quilt

hey everyone and welcome back to my channel we're continuing on with our quilting 101 series and today we are at the basting or quilt stage so we're going to talk about how to baste a quilt now there's a couple of ways you can do it I'm going to tell you which way I prefer of course just because I've tried a couple different things so the first way and probably the most common way is to pin base to your quilts so this is a set of they're actually kind of bent a little bit and I'll do a close-up so you can see these but they're just safety pins and if you're going to want to pin baste your quilt the best thing to do is put basting pins approximately four to five inches apart so I kind of use my hand as a guide now what that means is that you're going to need a lot of pins the good news about pin basting is that you don't have to keep buying new pins you can reuse them over and over and so you're kind of saving money in that way you also don't need to worry about any kind of fumes or anything like that it's like if you were to spray baste your quilts so this is a good option my only problem with this and I don't pin baste my quilts anymore is because I've tried a couple of different times I've tried putting my pins closer together I tried all kinds of stuff and no matter what I do I still get some sort of slippage with my fabric it's usually my backing fabric so that's not as big of a deal but it can also be the front on quilt top and as your quilting your quilt will get like pushed around just from the pressure of the quilt and the pressure of your your machine and all those kinds of things and so your quilt top can kind of start pushing now if you're going to pin base we'll talk about this in the free motion quilting it's best to start in the center and then kind of work your way out so you're smoothing your quilt out as you go um and so um I'll show you a little sample of how to pin baste as well just in case you're curious okay so just one more quick thing on the pin basting pins come in different sizes and I'll do a close-up for you I would go ahead and go with the smaller ones I think these are about an inch if not just a little bit less I did try these bigger ones and they put really big holes in the fabric they're kind of hard to get through and they're not necessary so I would produce on get a pin based I do prefer these smaller ones now the other thing to consider when your pin basting is that you're going to have pins all over your quilt so when you go to free motion quilt it then you're going to have to stop every four to five inches and remove your pins and I kind of like to once I get my groove going I like to kind of keep going I don't like to have to stop a lot so that's just kind of another reason why I don't you're welcome to do whatever works better for you it's just something to consider so what I do is um spray basting now I am this isn't a sponsored ad or anything but I use 505 this is my favorite spray basting because I feel like it gives a nice secure hold the downside of course with spray basting is you need to be able to do it in a well-ventilated area just so that you're not breathing in fumes and then you're also going to kind of want to watch for if you're spraying around the edges that you don't have a lot of overspray so you might need to protect your surface that you're spraying on I have done it outside if it's a nice not super wet need a but then your quilt also maybe gets dirty so it kind of depends on what kind of locations you have to do that now the reason that I spray baste and the reason that I like this is because I feel like it's much more secure so what I have found using this is I don't need quite as much of an allowance of extra batting and backing around the outside of my quilt because once you spray it down it's basically glue and so your quilt doesn't really move around hardly at all when you're quilting it so I have done coats before where I had just probably a half an inch leftover of my backing because I've miscalculated and it was totally fine because I had spray based it and it didn't push any fabric or anything like that so that is one thing that I really like about this spray basting technique so I'm going to show you how to do that the other thing that I'm going to be using up like all the time and I buy these kind of in bulk packs are the blue just regular painters tape you can get this from any hardware store the reason that I like to use this is because it's made to stick down but also peel off really easily without sticking to your floor or wherever your work surface is so it just comes off really easy it doesn't leave any kind of residue or anything that I would use this tape whether I spray basted or pin-based so either way you're going to need some kind of tape to help secure your backing so let's I'm going to show you how to do that and how I set up it and I know there's other ways to do this but this is just the way that works the best for me with the space that I have so hopefully it'll help one of you as well so let's go take a look at how we do this all right so before we can based our quote we need to get our backing and batting all squared away so how I do that is I'll take my finished quilt top and I happen to have one right here and you just need to measure the length and the width of your quilt top now depending on the size you might need to get out like a measuring tape or something like that I have a nice mat right here on my table so I'm just going to fold it in half because that's easier for me to figure out my measurements and then I'll just double whatever my measurement is so let's measure this is the width I believe first so I just folded my quilt top in half and then I just lined it up down there with my zero and as you can see it goes clear over here - Oh what is that 37 inches all right so since I folded my top in half we're going to have to double that number which gives us 74 and then we're going to do the same thing only with the width of our quilt all right so the next thing I'm going to do because I don't really like to do quote math is get out my backing and binding calculator this is the quilters paradise won again and it just starts out asking your width of fabric so you're just going to want to put that one in it defaults at 43 inches which is what most bolts are so unless you're using something different um you can change that or just leave it then for the width I'm going to go ahead and punch in my 60 the length I had I think was 76 and then I'm going to give myself two inches overage right here if you were doing if you were doing the pinning method for basting then I would give myself three to four inches instead because you're gonna have a little bit more shifting two inches is totally plenty if you've spray binded and then you just hit calculate and then it's going to tell you okay I need four and a half inches or four and a half yards of fabric if my quilt runs 60 by 76 or three and five-eighths if it's the opposite direction so that'll help you if you're deciding on directional fabric like I had talked about before so now I know how much fabric to get so now let's prepare our backing okay so now that I have my backing I just go ahead and re measure to make sure that I have width of my quilt plus a couple inches extra on both sides so then I have my yardage and this is folded in half so this is how it came off the bolt the salvaged ends are together down here so I have four layers of fabric next I'm going to get out my ruler and I'm just going to trim as close as I can to the edge here because it's folded in half and I just want to separate it because what we're going to be doing is sewing both of these pieces together to make it 80 inches wide instead of 42 which is your regular bolt width okay so I'm just going to kind of line it up and I'm winding my ruler edge down here on my fold and it doesn't have to be precise because you gave yourself some extra overage but I just try and not waste my fabric if at all possible now the reason this isn't cutting quite as well as because I've got this mat on my table and this is great for protecting my table I saw in my dining room however it's not a great surface to cut on so I use my other mat if I'm doing any kind of major cutting but this one it doesn't have to be perfect so we're good to go alright so this is now cut in half and what we're going to do next is take it over to the sewing machine and just sew down the edges to combine these pieces now because we're not really worried about a quarter of an inch seam or anything I'll probably just sew along the salvage you can see the salvaged dots on the fabric and we'll take a closer look at that but you don't have to be super precise on you just want to have a straight seam so whether you're sewing a half an inch to cover up Salvage whether you want to cut that off and sew a quarter of an inch it's up to you it doesn't really matter okay so I have my backing now and it's just right sides together remember if you have a directional print you'll probably have to flip one side over so that you are keeping the print going in the same direction but this one doesn't have to we don't have to worry about that for that I'm just going to go ahead and sew a straight seam all the way down attaching both these pieces remember right sides together and I'm going to go ahead and just follow this little line I don't know what that is it looks like about five-eighths of an inch it just maybe maybe it's a half-inch actually right okay so I'm done sewing my two pieces of fabric yardage together I've trimmed up my seam to a quarter of an inch you can do it before or after it really doesn't matter and then I'm just going to hit this with my iron and I open mine um I I press my seams open I just kind of prefer that on the backing I don't know I suppose it doesn't matter if you press them to one side or not I will also take my iron and go over this entire piece just to kind of get out any crinkles or you know any folds that were in it from being on the bolt or folded up in my my stash or whatever so I'm just going to go ahead and finish doing that and then I will meet you in my kitchen to get this quote basted okay so if you're going to pin based this would be the method you would use so I kind of like to just grab the pilot pins and just kind of start throwing them and then I use my hand is about my base for every five inches or so if I have a pattern that allows me to do it like this one I would probably put a pin in the middle one in the corner another one in each corner here and then kind of repeat that pattern over the course of the quilt now depending on how big your quilt is like this is obviously more than five inches so you're going to want to add you know extra pins to fill in the gaps and that kind of thing to put it so putting the pins in is really easy you just especially with these curved ones you just scoop it under make sure you're getting all three layers the batting the top and the backing and then since they're curved it's really easy to just pop them out the front and then you just safety pin them on the only thing is you're just going to want to make sure that you went through all three of your layers and then you're just going to continue doing that across your whole quilt now if it works out you have a large enough table space when I'm pin quilting then I will actually go ahead and put it on a table right now it's on my dining room table so I can stand up and it's a lot easier for me to sit here and put these pins in versus hurting my back and leaning over my quilt on crawling on the floor and all that kind of thing so you're just going to continue adding your pins until they're all in the first thing I'm going to do is clean off my floor and open my windows just so I have proper ventilation and then the next thing I'm going to do is lay my backing out on the floor and I'm going to lay it right sides toward the floor so that the wrong side is facing up and then I'm going to get out my tape and as you can see I'm putting one piece of tape on the opposite sides just moving my way around the quilt and slowly stretching it out I'm not pulling super hard just enough to smooth out any of the wrinkles that are in the backing you don't want to pull it too hard or it won't stay with the tape the next thing I'm doing is laying my batting out on the quilt top and just smoothing it out and this part you do want to kind of take your time and get it all nice and smoothed out and then method I use is just to roll it down about to halfway and then I'm going to spray it pretty well with my 5:05 basting spray and then just fold it up and slowly smooth it out as I go and then I'm going to turn around and repeat that process on the other side of the quilt and as you can see I'm kind of pushing my hands underneath that layer there so that I can make sure I'm getting it all nice and flat get out all the wrinkles and then I'm essentially going to do the same exact thing to my quilt top I get that all nice and spread out and then roll it down about halfway I went a little bit farther here but the other thing that I do when I'm putting on the top on is I use my scissors and as you can see I'm clipping off any dark colored threads that are going to possibly be showing up under the white because you definitely don't want to be able to see those and if you have red like I have on this quilt you will be able to see it under the white fabric and so I'm clipping off as many as I can I usually try and do that while I'm earning it out as well but I always miss a few so as you can see I turn to the other side rolled it down and spraying it and getting ready to finish it off here and then I'm going to take my scissors cut off any extra overage and get my quilt top up off the floor all right guys so those are my tips on how to base your quilt I hope that it helps some of you guys out let me know if you have any questions or concerns I'm happy to do my best to answer those you can send me an email you can comment on this video whatever works best for you as promised I have another fun giveaway today fat quarter shop is sponsoring a giveaway for these omni grid scissors they're really nice little sharp scissors and they're a great addition to your sewing stash so if you'd like to enter to win those just I'll put my link to my blog below you're going to head over there and enter to win and I hope you are enjoying this video series and I will see you next time you

Channel: Erica Arndt

Views: 83,122

Rating: 4.9235954 out of 5

Keywords: Quilting, Sewing, Tutorial, Baste, How To

Id: rJ8wF__iuag

Length: 13min 39sec (819 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2016