I have successfully followed the hand basting piece of Sharon Schamber's tutorial on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_EjBGz5vGQ
In part 1, she talks about using painted boards to roll the layers out evenly while basting, but I still use good old fashioned masking tape. I tape the backing to the floor, layer on my batting, smooth & then layer on the quilt top & smooth again. Then, I grab some ugly old thread from back when I didn't know any better and just bought the cheapest one I could find & get to basting. I don't use floss because I don't see the need to buy more stuff, but I do like working with a chenille needle because it's easy to thread & relatively long. A basting needle would probably work even better. I just haven't gotten around to buying a pack yet. I do that zig-zag pattern. It seems to work quite well -- better than safety pins even!
I know other people swear by basting in circles rather than the zig-zag. For that you just do a large running basting stitch in an outward spiral starting at the center.