I didn't see any mention of what kind of foot was being used when machine quilting. I find that a walking foot is essential when I'm quilting unless it is free motion. This really helps feed all the layers through the machine at the same rate and thus reduces the chance of puckering.
I have never basted a quilt with straight pins but have pin basted using safety pins which worked pretty good. Thanks to posts on this board however I now only glue baste my quilts with washable school glue. I lay my batting out flat and put the glue on that holding the bottle up rather high away from the bat to get a fine stream coming from the bottle. I then spread the quilt back over the quilt bat. I do it in sections. I found that putting the glue on the bat reduced any glue seeping through on the table and also allowed me to smooth the quilt back over the bat to make sure I didn't get any puckers. After doing the back I flip it over and do the same process for the front. I love the fact that I don't have the extra bulk of the pins when I wrestling the quilt through my machine and I can quilt anywhere on the quilt without having to worry about hitting or removing pins.