How to Glue Baste a Quilt – free tutorial from Itty Bitty Handmade!

Hi everyone!  I’m Hetal from Itty Bitty Handmade.  We’re really excited to share the unique basting method that’s used in our kits.  Basting your quilt is the process of temporarily adhering your layers together so that it’s easy to sew your quilt layers together.   This step is incredibly important to avoid puckering and fabric shifting when you go to sew the quilt.  The method that we’ll show today literally works so well that you won’t even need a special walking foot for your sewing machine.

Let’s dive right in!  The core of our process uses a non-toxic white washable craft glue to baste the quilt (make sure that the glue you pick is washable, like this one).  While we could drizzle this onto our batting, simply drizzing the glue would leave small areas unadhered.   To really prevent any puckering or shifting issues, it’s critical that literally every inch of the quilt stuck together.  To get this complete adhesion, we’re going to both drizzle the glue and then use a foam brush to evenly spread the glue.  

Here’s the process in detail.  You’ll start by laying your batting flat on a large work area.  You can use the floor, but be sure to protect any areas you worried about with a plastic sheet underneath.  Next, you’ll align your quilt backer on top of the batting.  

To make the glue process manageable, you’ll work on 1/3 portions of the quilt at a time.  Start by lifting the backer to expose the bottom 1/3 of the batting.  Now, using a swirl pattern drizzle your washable glue onto to the exposed batting going over the entire exposed area. 

Once you’ve fully drizzled this section, you’ll use a foam brush to simple spread the drizzled glue so that you have complete coverage of the glue on the batting.  

Once this is complete, slowly lay your quilt backer down onto the glued batting.  Smooth out the layers to make sure you don’t get any big wrinkles.  As the glue dries, the quilt will look a little wrinkly, but that won’t cause any problems and this is normal.  

Next lift your quilt backer, exposing the middle third of the batting.  Repeat the glue up process for this middle section of the batting. 

 Once this is complete, you’ll do the same for the last one-third section of the batting.  

Ta da!  You’re halfway there.  Now flip your layers and repeat the process on the other side of the batting to adhere the front of the quilt to the batting.  

Once this is complete, give the quilt about 8 hours to dry completely before moving on to sewing.  

Easy peasy, and best of all, you won’t have to worry about pesky puckers or shifting.  This process makes the sewing step smooth sailing.  We hope you’ll give this method a try.  

Happy Quilting!

Eva and Hetal