I used my longarm twice to baste quilts for a friend who hand quilts them. I basted both in horizontal and vertical grids. I learned on the first one what not to do, which is: don't stitch a couple of stitches then drag the machine to the next spot leaving the long threads in between, because it looks great on the frame, but as soon as you start to remove the quilt, all those long threads catch on everything on the frame (bolts, ends of things), buttons down the front of your shirt, etc. And each time one of those long threads catches on something and breaks, it pulls out those two stitches you had in there. So the second time I basted for her, I believe I quilted freehand small circles in each tack down spot on the grid. I still left the dragged threads, but then when they caught on something and broke, none of the basting pulled out.