Delightful Stars – Basting with Pinmoors

Michele Foster of Mishka’s Playground hosts fabulous quilt-alongs each year on  her facebook group, Aiming for Accuracy.  Each quilt along emphasizes improving cutting and piecing techniques to improve quilting accuracy. Delightful Stars is the wonderful pattern she designed for her 2014 quilt along.  I missed the beginning of the quilt along but purchased the pattern anyway late in 2014 after seeing what other members of the group were posting. I finished piecing the top in late July 2015. I set it aside while I got caught up on other projects. I further held off until I felt confident I had finally mastered tension on my Gammill Charm. That day has finally arrived and it’s time to baste and move forward with this baby.

Several years ago I tried Sharon Schamber’s hand basting method for basting a quilt I planned to hand quilt. I chose to use the boards with pinmoors on Delightful Stars as an experiment. Spray basting is my usual go-to method for basting. But this quilt is so large I don’t have a good area to tape it down and still get around it while I spray the layers. The boards provided enough tension to keep the area taut as I worked on the pin basting. I must say that pinning with Clover flower pins and securing with  pinmoors went faster than safety pins. The straight pins are thinner, sharper, and  easier to push through the fabric. And securing the pinmoors to the pins is definitely easier than closing safety pins. I finished the basting in one afternoon (definitely longer than spray basting). And, as you can see, I very densely basted. The pins are about 4 inches apart. Next step will be to stitch-in-the-ditch around each of the stars and borders to stabilize the quilt.