Monday, June 14, 2010

My first adventure in spray basting...

I looove piecing a quilt top. I don't even mind binding my quilts (I know, that's weird), but the basting process is so stressful to me for some reason and it's so time consuming! When I read people's blogs who seem to be finishing projects quickly and they spray baste, I figured, what the heck. I'll give it a try. So, in the spirit of "process" I wrote this post as I was spray basting (like 2 weeks ago).

I'm finding that my seams are getting a little wonky, but not in a good way. I'm trying to flatten the top out, but it's sort of distorting things. Now I've realized that half of the top is "glued" to the batting, which is "glued" to the backing and it's completely off.

If I reposition the whole top, I run the risk of stretching the fabric and making it permanently "off." I used some pins anyway, per the suggestion of some posts I saw about this. So far I'm not convinced this is a big life changer. I also have a LOT of seams in this quilt, so there's more room to stretch and get a little crooked. More to come on this process. Maybe since I just basted the whole thing including some pins, while watching glee, in under an hour (amazing!), I'll just have to settle for now and get a bit more practice in the future. I'm sure that my boyfriend will appreciate the "taped to the kitchen floor" stage has drastically decreased in time. I'm interested to see how this goes stippling, especially since that's brand new to me too.

Okay, okay, I'm rocking the stippling, the layers are staying together well with the spray baste and a few pins. No puckers so far, and then...

Okay, back to real time now: This keeps happening, so I ended up taking my machine to get repaired/tuned up for the first time ever (which is so bad of me!) and I was without it for 9 days. aaahh!! I played with a lot of fabric, kind of went crazy during the last week or so, and finally got to work on something new yesterday. I'll show that later I guess. I'd love to hear if anyone out there...(echo, echo...) has any thoughts on spray basting...
Thanks for looking!
Meaghan
p.s. for those of you friends/family of mine who read this just to be nice to me, sorry this was a boring quilty blog post. I'll have prettier pictures to show soon! :)

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2 comments:

  1. Liz JimenezJune 14, 2010 at 6:53 PM

    I am a total spray-basting convert. Here's some things that have helped:

    1. I found I have to be better in the piecing stage, a lot more trimming to make sure things come together nice and flat. I was lazier about that and having trouble in basting and quilting. Now that I'm a little psycho about trimming blocks to the same size, my tops come together better and basting is MUCH smoother.

    2. Iron and iron again before laying it out. When I'm lazy about this, I get puckers.

    3. I tape down the back, then spread the batting so I know it's in the right place. THEN I pull it about halfway back and start spraying from the center to one edge. Then fold back the other side and spray again, center to the edge.

    4. Same with the top - I spread it all out as flat as I can before spraying at all, make sure it's laid out and lined up the way I want it (especially since I often do pieced backs, I usually take several tries to get it as straight as I can). Then, fold about half of it back and start spraying and smoothing a bit at a time, center to edge, repeat with the second half.

    Hope that helps. I found quilting went a LOT better once I was more careful in my piecing AND started using spray basting. So much faster than pinning!

    -Liz

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  2. MadeByMeaghanJune 14, 2010 at 7:04 PM

    Liz, you are so fast at commenting! I did all those things (following instructions from someone else)! I guess I just need a little more practice. I'm glad to know you've had success though, that will keep me motivated!

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