My Favorite Safety Pins // Try it Tuesday
Unless you send all of your quilt tops to be professionally long armed (and if you do, I wish I was you!), at some point, you have to baste your quilts. Most of the time, I pin-baste my quilts. This means that I use safety pins to secure and hold together my quilt sandwich (the quilt top, the batting, and the quilt back) to keep it from shifting while I quilt it on my machine.Lots of quilters use baste almost exclusively with a spray adhesive. I often spray baste baby quilts because it is fast, and I only use 505 Spray Baste. I've tried most of the other brands and I really prefer this one. I have also found that spray baste does NOT work with voile quilt backs (this quilt is backed in voile), and I haven't had much success with spray baste and Art Gallery fabrics either.Personally, I find that I get better results when I pin baste anything larger than a baby quilt. These are my favorite safety pins. They are sharp, they are thin, they are small, and they are easy to close. The sharp point really does "glide smoothly through layers of fabrics" as the packaging suggests. I try to place them in the same direction and about the same distance apart, it makes them easier to remove. When I take them out, I stick them in a small glass jar without closing them so they are easy to use on my next quilt. If I find that one is dull or doesn't go into the fabric easily, I throw it out.If you don't like the safety pins you are currently using or would like to give pin basting a try, I highly recommend these. I have been using them for 3 + years, and I just bought another set this week. Note: These pins are tiny! I use size 1, which is about 1.25'' long.
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