arrow_circle_down All about Basting Stitches

If you don't have a basting function on your embroidery machine, then download our free basting stitch set, and watch how handy a basting stitch can be - from ensuring your fabric and batting is secure in the hoop, to aligning designs easily.

If you do have the basting function on your machine – Learn how to use it – it makes life easier.

DOWNLOAD FREE BASTING SET

WHY USE BASTING STITCHES?

Use a basting stitch anytime it would be physically hard to hoop your fabric – ie Perfect for Towels or making Quilt Blocks with fabric and batting, or even ‘Quilting’ thru all layers of a Quilt.

I am a useless hooper - hooping a piece of fabric is ok, but if I have to hoop batting and fabric and try to line everything up squarely, I find it very hard.  I prefer to use the method below - hooping stabiliser - then 'floating' the fabric and batting over the hoop, then stitching a basting stitch to hold the fabric in place.

To ensure a perfect stitch out, the most important thing you can do is to control movement within your hoop.   

• If you are having issues with outlines being ‘off’, the first thing to check is that you have the correct stabiliser, and that you have ‘hooped’ your fabric properly, so your fabric cannot ‘move’.
• Using the pinning method to hoop your stabiliser, floating your fabric over the hoop and stitching a basting stitch WILL help.

BASTING WITH ALIGNMENT MARKS

Using the basting stitch with the aligning marks for – you guessed it – helping you align more than 1 design.

Again, check your machine manual – you may have functionality on your machine which will do all this for you!!  My Brother has the camera function which would be much easier and probably quicker to align designs.

I created the two samples above to show you how you can create large Quilted pieces in your embroidery hoop.

The Hearts sample was made with four 4x4 heart quilting designs, while the bubbles is four 5x7 bubble quilting designs.

Please note - the Circles and Heart design are NOT included in this free basting set - I have used them to demonstrate how you can align designs.  They are included in the Heart Stars and Circle Quilting set 

I have used high contrast thread, (and did not quite align one of my heart stitches precisely  - purely operator error!!) but I’m sure you get the idea – ‘generally’ this style of quilting would be done in a matching thread.

VIDEO

 Watch how I use Basting and Aligning stitches