the master baster

I've been moving along, slowly but surely, on all of my projects despite my little setback over the weekend. One thing I was determined to do this past weekend was to baste my quilt. What is basting you my ask?

No, not this. Although that looks DELICIOUS.

Basting is basically securing all the layers of your quilting creation together, so that they don't slip, pucker or distort while you're quilting. My quilt is made up of three layers: The top is the colorful crazy creation I've been making and detailing on my blog. The middle is a low loft natural cotton batting that will add warmth and girth to the quilt. And finally, the backing fabric: This colorful cotton dot-print that I found at Jo-Ann Fabrics.

First I had to find a big enough floor space to work on. Basting a full size quilt required a good amount of space, so I settled in front of the television. SCORE. Next, I spread out the backing fabric (wrong side up!) being careful to smooth lumps and bumps along the way. I unwrapped the batting I bought back in October and realized it needed to be ironed. No problem! I poured some ice tea, tuned into some HGTV show about knocking down walls and set to work. Once the batting was smoothed, I layered it on top of the backing. Finally, I smoothed out the top layer over the batting.

Now for the fun part. 

There are many ways you can baste the layers together, including hand stitching and safety-pinning. But, I found a badass basting GUN.  Can you believe it?! A BASTING GUN! You insert a needle through all three layers, pull the trigger and BAM! A little plastic thing binds the layers together. I worked from the center of one side ALLLLLLLLLLLLL the way down to the other side and got it done in about an hour. Not bad!