When I started quilting, I bought a whole bunch of these pins from Joanns' and basted exactly one quilt with them. I found them to be quite dull. I hated crawling on the floor all afternoon to get one quilt basted, and planning my fmq around those pins was a pain in the butt. Now I only spray baste. I basted 2 quilts yesterday in about 20 minutes by laying them over a craft table. Best part is, when I quilt, I won't need to stop every 20 seconds, take off my gloves in order to take out a pin, and then put my gloves back on.