After I posted earlier this week I had a few questions about the Microstitch gun I had mentioned. I had heard about it from a friend and recently my supplier of reasonably priced basting spray (which I love) has stopped shipping it (something about spray cans and the Royal Mail....). And me and pin basting are not friends....
Before I go any further, I paid for mine, I'm not being asked to review by a supplier etc,. I got mine from Amazon in the UK for approx £23. It works by firing little plastic tags through the layers of your quilt - like the tags you get on new clothes, but smaller. The gun came with 1800 tags half in white and half in black.
I basted four quilts: The City Sampler at 90"x 90", a lap quilt and two baby quilts, and I used about half of the supplied tags. It seems pretty easy to buy additional tags and probably works out cheaper than the basting spray overall.
If you aren't comfortable spray basting larger quilts, then this is a good alternative - I have basted and quilted a 116" x 116" quilt with no bother though. This system also removes the need to for chemical glue and spray which is another good thing in a house with a new baby.
There were a couple of disadvantages with the basting: to put the tag through the layers, you push the needle on the gun through all layers and pull the trigger. The needle is not tiny. With regular cotton I think it will be fine and washing will return the threads, but with the finer weaaves such as Art Gallery I'm not so sure. I'll have to pop a tag in an Art Gallery part of my Arabella Hexagon quilt and report back.
The needle was a bit temperamental, but I quickly learned what I was doing wrong, and could avoid it for the most part, and knew how to fix it once there was a problem.
The final disadvantage versus spray basting (but not pin basting) is the need to list the quilt from the table to get the needle through.
Today I quilted this, pieced by my mother-in-law. It quilted up just as well as spray basted quilts. I purposely quilted over a couple of the tags and I had no issues at all.
So far, so good. I have a feeling that the most annoying part will be going over the quilt and removing all the tags once I'm done - for this reason I basted in a grid so finding the tags would be easier.
My weekend will be a combination of more quilting - two baby quilts - the plan is spirals. Big ones. And a grizzly baby who had her first immunisations today.
Before I go any further, I paid for mine, I'm not being asked to review by a supplier etc,. I got mine from Amazon in the UK for approx £23. It works by firing little plastic tags through the layers of your quilt - like the tags you get on new clothes, but smaller. The gun came with 1800 tags half in white and half in black.
If you aren't comfortable spray basting larger quilts, then this is a good alternative - I have basted and quilted a 116" x 116" quilt with no bother though. This system also removes the need to for chemical glue and spray which is another good thing in a house with a new baby.
There were a couple of disadvantages with the basting: to put the tag through the layers, you push the needle on the gun through all layers and pull the trigger. The needle is not tiny. With regular cotton I think it will be fine and washing will return the threads, but with the finer weaaves such as Art Gallery I'm not so sure. I'll have to pop a tag in an Art Gallery part of my Arabella Hexagon quilt and report back.
The needle was a bit temperamental, but I quickly learned what I was doing wrong, and could avoid it for the most part, and knew how to fix it once there was a problem.
The final disadvantage versus spray basting (but not pin basting) is the need to list the quilt from the table to get the needle through.
Today I quilted this, pieced by my mother-in-law. It quilted up just as well as spray basted quilts. I purposely quilted over a couple of the tags and I had no issues at all.
So far, so good. I have a feeling that the most annoying part will be going over the quilt and removing all the tags once I'm done - for this reason I basted in a grid so finding the tags would be easier.
My weekend will be a combination of more quilting - two baby quilts - the plan is spirals. Big ones. And a grizzly baby who had her first immunisations today.
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