My Favorite Way to Baste a Quilt

Today I wanted to share my favorite basting method.

Surprised?! Yep I don't pin my quilts I spray them and  I LOVE both of these sprays! The yellow bottle is Dritz Quilting Spray Adhesive and the white is June Taylor Quilt Basting Spray. They make basting a quilt a breeze and much faster, at least for me. Before I tried spray basting I would spend hours pinning my quilts. It seemed no matter how hard I tried when pinning my quilt layers together they always shifted. I would pin the entire thing just to quilt one row and have to go back and re-pin pulling everything tight again and repeat the process over and over. I even resorted to using straight pins between my safety pins since I could pin them faster and keep things tighter but that only resulted in me getting stuck/scraped when I was quilting it. This is so much easier! I lay out my quilt back wrong side up and spray it. Then I spread my batting on it pressing it together while smoothing out any wrinkles. Then spray the batting and lay my quilt top on it. Smooth it out and its ready to quilt!

Now while this is my go to for quilt basting it isn't with out its drawbacks. First its not cheap. The regular price of the Dritz brand is $15.99 while the June Taylor brand is $12.99. I buy it at Joann's when they have a good sale or a good coupon. Both brands have worked well for me. I used the June Taylor one (first time trying that brand) on my queen size bunting quilt and had no issues.

Another thing I ran into is this stuff can ruin your manicure so be careful! I did not know this and here is what happened.

This is just regular nail polish and the basting spray kind of dissolved it making it tacky. It wasn't enough that the polish got on anything it just looked bad, I had cotton batting stuck all over my nails and it wouldn't wash off. Gel polish on the other hand was better. The batting still stuck to my nails as you can see.

That time it was really bad, but I was able to remove it with alcohol swabs and save my manicure. It just dulled the finish a bit.

 

Just something to be aware of if you are like me and keep your nails painted.  

Finally protect the surface you are spraying on. I bought a cheap, plastic, shower curtain specifically for this and just put under my quilts before spraying so it doesn't get on my carpet. It's a temporary adhesive so it does dissipate but I try to be careful and keep it off the carpet. 

Hope you find these tips useful and if you try it let me know what you think.

Two Finished Quilts

I just realized it has been over a month since my last post! It never ceases to amaze me at how fast time can pass when you are either busy or doing something fun. In my case it was both. I finally finished the bunting quilt I was making for my sister and that I wrote about in my previous blog post. It was my first queen sized quilt! Here it is all finished.

In the second picture you can see the pieced backing from my previous tutorial.
I also finished a baby quilt for my step-sister who just had a baby girl. I was told her theme was "purple butterflies." So this is what I came up with. Here is the front:

And the back:

I love pieced quilt backs! I think they tie the quilt together nicely and from a thrifty perspective you can use pieces that may be left over from the top.

In my next post I am going to share my favorite quilt basting method so be sure to check back later this week!

Pieced Quilt Back

I ran into a bit of a problem the other day while working on a queen size quilt. I finished my top:

I was so excited to finally be finishing this up when I realized I did not have enough fabric for the back. Ugh! I couldn't believe it.  I even had three different fabrics in mind that I could use as the back. I had intended on lining up two long panels, matching the prints and sewing them together to make one large back piece. But non of them were large enough. And it was a lot of fabric as in over 6 yards of each print! I was losing so much fabric lining up the patterns that my queen quilt was going to turn into a twin size, not good! So I had three options

      1. Go buy more fabric. Specifically a wide quilting fabric which runs about $15/yard at Joann Fabrics and I needed 3yards.

      2. Go buy a 100% cotton sheet. This is what my Granny used for her large quilt backs, pretty smart in my opinion if only I had done this first.

      3. Get creative and make do with what I had on hand.

Number 3 please! So I got all of my left over strips and pieces from where I cut my flags and just stitched them together one on top of the other until I had a piece the length of my quilt top.  They were all different widths so I just trimmed the excess down to the width of the shortest piece, about 23inches. I also trimming the other edge to make sure it was even.

Then I just stitched my two long pieces to either side of my pieced strip and viola! One queen size quilt back.

Normally I do use one big piece of fabric just because that was how my Granny quilted and I learned from watching her. However, I think she would approve; especially since I made do with what I had on hand. I also used this method in the past on a baby quilt. I think it actually made it cuter and could even be reversible.

Hope this inspires you to get creative with your quilt backs! Just because its the back doesn't mean it can't be as pretty as the front. I will be back with pictures of the quilt once I am finished.

Woodland Themed Quilt and A Tiny Human

Good morning!  Yesterday I finished this adorable woodland quilt. A big thank you to Jedi Craft Girl for sharing this pattern on her blog! Here is a link to her page with the pattern http://www.jedicraftgirl.com/?s=birdie

Usually I take my photos indoors. Yes I know outdoors is better and more interesting, however nothing frightens me faster than the thought of getting a fresh from the sewing machine, brand new quilt grass stained or otherwise dirty! That said I decided to give it a try and was pleased with the outcome.  Ironically the one time I do try this someone was mowing their yard off in the distance so if you look closely at the top you can see what looks like the tiniest human head ever!  Too funny!  How about you, any tips for outdoor photos or funny mishaps?