basting gone bad

Well.

I did manage to get that quilt basted yesterday,

but it was a nightmare.

You know how I'm becoming a fan of 

basting my quilt top to batting,

adding some stitched in the ditch stabilizing stitches,

plus any quilting that I want on the front

but not the back

(like words)

??

I did that.

And it went well.

(though it's fair to say, 

I've determined the method is better suited 

to cotton and bamboo battings;

wool is a bit too bouncy.)

After basting the front to the (wool) batting,

I stitched in every other diagonal seam

(the quilt blocks were sewn on point)

and then I added some words.

I wanted to line up an element on the back

with the front,

and thought I'd use the lines where the 4x8 boards are joined

as my orientation mark,

so I went out to the new house

where I'd swept a 10x12 swatch of subfloor super well

and laid my backing out.

Then things went south.

My backing is a super silky Art Gallery voile.

I was having a hard time getting my tape to to stick to it,

but I just pressed it.

really hard.

I spray-basted about 15 inches or so (x width of quilt)

then decided maybe I should get help.

Plus

it was a lot hotter out there

than it was when I'd basted the top portion earlier in the day,

and getting it done quickly was sounding really good,

so I ran to the (other) house

and hollered for Brandon.

When we got back out there,

the voile had completely come loose on one side.

That should have been my clue.

It wasn't.

We pulled the backing back where it was supposed to be

and pressed down - really hard - on the tape again.

My plan was to move quicker than the creeping fabric,

I guess.

We got another section basted,

and the voile completely pulled away from the tape.

Crap!

We pulled it back to where it was supposed to be

(thank-you orientation lines in the floor!)

and used some of my precious, pricey basting glue to hold it in place.

Desperate times and all....

We basted another section

and well,

so much for my basting spray holding the backing in place on the floor trick.

(I can see now that what I should have done,

was tape my basted top to the floor,

the add the backing.

But that wasn't at all clear to me in the (hot, sweaty) moment.

We re-glued the remaining unbasted portion of backing to the floor

with more of my (precious, pricey) basting spray,

and proceeded to quickly finish basting the darn thing.

I was more than apprehensive about the quality of our work

when I prepared to turn the quilt over and check for wrinkles.

Check for wrinkles?

HA!

No checking was necessary;

they all but screamed at us.

There was major wrinkling

all over the bottom 1/3 of the quilt.

To which Brandon said,

"Well - you like it crinkle up..."

Umm. Yeah. But I don't want to sew the crinkles in....

And then he left me out there in the 100 degree house,

and went back to his homework.

I managed to get the wrinkles smoothed out,

but I wasn't overly confident

 that the fabric would stay where it was supposed to.

That Art Gallery voile is seriously slippery stuff.

Add silky wool batting to the equation

and all bets are off.

I decided I would need to pin baste.

Except that I don't have any pins!

(I used to pin baste. I should have hundreds of pins. 

I have none.

Seriously - zero.

What the heck?!)

So my only option

was hand basting.

With a needle and thread.

On the floor.

100 degrees.