Long Arm basting question
 

If you are basting a quilt on the long arm, with the intent being it will be removed and then quilted on a domestic sewing machine, what pattern of basting do you use?
Do you do horizontal, vertical, or a mix of both?
Do you do a gentle zig zag type of pattern?

I am basting a couple of quilts for a friend so she can later quilt them at home.

I took a class from Jamie Wallen, and he said that a meander works best when basting a quilt. He says it's better than a grid at keeping everything flat and square. A lot of quilters baste in a grid, though.

Since your friend plans to machine quilt, I would strongly recommend using water-soluble thread for the basting. Superior has two good ones, and I would use the heavier one in both top and bobbin for basting.

Thread basting is fine for hand quilting, as you clip and remove basting threads a section at a time. It is usually not used for machine quilting (unless you baste with water-soluble thread) because it is difficult to remove both the top and bobbin threads for the area you want to quilt.

The Superior water-soluble thread is on the pricey side, but worth it.

Edit: Maybe the two of you should glue-baste or spray-baste the quilts instead?

Prism--thank you for info--have not had this come up but your answer is good and useful, I'll remember it for the future.

Agree 100% with Prism (as usual!! :D)

Thanks for the input. At the present I don't have water soluble thread, so I'll be using what's on hand. But I'll keep that idea in mind next time I'm near a store that has water soluble thread.

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.

When I basted for this purpose on my friend's long arm, so I could machine quilt at home, I used grids about 10 inches apart, extending the stitch length to 1 inch. The basting stitches were easy enough to pull out when I was done quilting, and there weren't any long jump threads to get caught on my sewing machine foot.

I was taught to sew a grid horizontally and vertically about 4" apart on my longarm with regular thread(water soluble thread would be a convenience for the quilter but pricey as stated). I would put on my horizontal lock then manually eyeball about 2"-3" spaces to take one stitch at a time all the way across. Repeat vertically and continue. I don't think this would be any problem as far as taking the basting stitches out later. I never saw a quilt after I did the basting but didn't hear any complaints from the hand quilters either.

I should add that I would not recommend a meander for basting if you are going to use regular thread. (I'm sure Jamie Wallen, when he recommended this, was using water-soluble thread.) Creating a large grid would make more sense since your friend could pull long sections of thread out as needed. The problem with machine quilting over regular thread basting is that it can become a lot of work trying to take out the basting thread, especially if the machine needle pierces the basting thread while quilting. If the batting can support it, I think the idea of quilting lines 10" apart and stitches an inch in length would be good.

I recapped all the recommendations given here to my friend. She decided we should try horizontal basting over an approx. 4 inch grid.
She'll try that and let me know how it works out.