Sandwiching - pin, baste or both
 

When you as a hand quilter, sandwich your quilt, which method works best for you--baste, pin or both. I'm ready to sandwich a queen quilt and need your opinions on what I should do.

When I hand quilt, I baste with thread

I've tried every way of basting. I only use Elmer's school glue to baste now and will never go back to another method. It's fast and so easy. The quilt layers are perfectly flat and smooth. I baste on two 6ft fold up tables. For handquilting I use very very tiny drops out of the handquilting path. It takes longer but so easy.

For hand quilting, I always used thread basting because I used a hoop. Tried pins once, but the pins interfered with the hooping. With thread basting it was easy to clip a thread as needed when my hand quilting got to that area.

Edit: I can see where pin basting would work if you have a square frame or hoop; you could hoop in the blank strips between pins. My hoop is round, and for a round hoop thread basting is best.

I have heard of some hand quilters spray basting their quilts but I haven't done it myself. If I were to try, I would use 505 as some of the other sprays could create drag on the needle.

for hand quilting I always thread baste- it is so much easier than dealing with a couple hundred pins in the way. I tried spray basting once- was not happy with the results- and still wound up thread basting...and had a heck of a time quilting through the sticky spray.

Agreed 100%

It is easiest to mount in a frame is to hand baste the quilt. I would NEVER even think of trying to hand quilt when there were even tiny drops of Elmer's glue somewhere on the quilt. I like to be able to take the basting out a little bit at a time when I am quilting in a section. I don't find the time to do much hand quilting anymore.

For me it depends on the size of the quilt. Larger quilts (queen; king) I tend to thread baste as that many pins really add a lot of weight to the sandwich. I don't have much of an issue with the pins getting in the way of the hoop. I just adjust the pins or the sandwich accordingly. But the extra weight of the pins makes turning the quilt every which way just that much more of an ordeal. Now, if I could quilt in different directions that might not be such a big deal. I can only quilt towards myself.

When my Mom hand quilts, we take the top, backing, and batting to the LA quilter. He thread bastes it for a small fee. That saves a bit of time and all the effort of the regular ways of thread basting.