I don't know about the rest of you but when I was in grade school (called elementary back then!) we used LePage's glue. It was golden color and was dispensed out of a rubber top with a slit in it. Elmer's didn't come out until later.

I still pin baste my quilts. I do it on my glass topped dining table and I make larger quilts and I have to move them to different sections to get them all pinned. I don't think the glue basting would work very well with my set up.
I do think glue basting would work well for matching intersections when sewing long rows to each other. I could see right away that they are matchine up as they should. I will try it. Thanks for all the helpful hints.

I remember that stuff! It was rubber cement and cleaned up pretty easily because, after it was dry, you could rub it off into a small ball.

You're right. It was mucilage -- actually gum arabic, not rubber cement. I finally thought to Google it.
http://www.thecakelady.ca/lepagesglue/mucilage.html

Oh yes, I remember that! I would never use it as I always thought it was mucous. YUK, actually mucous might work too - double yuk

I remember that mucilage; it's what we used at home. At school, we had to use messy white paste, in a jar. It usually smelled a bit like wintergreen and always left the pasted item rather lumpy.

Would it be appropriate to use this method of basting on a Christmas tree skirt that I'm working on an don't really want to wash?

I, too, just finished the binding on a quilt using Elmer's School Glue for the first time. I followed the youtube post The Binding Angel and it was quite helpful. The only suggstion I have is to use a dry iron which I don't think was mentioned in the video... I learned this quickly when the glue didn't set. I ususally do most of my pressing with steam so I didn't give the iron setting any thought until the glue was still sticky when I took my project to my machine.

I use the archival glue sticks especially when putting together my miniature (as well as pp) projects. This glue doesn't cause the threads to breakdown.