You FINALLY finished your quilt top! You’re ready to baste it and get on with the quilting process, but aren’t sure where to start. If you are a beginner, learning how to spray baste your quilt is going to be the easiest way to get the process done with the best results. 

For those who are brand new to quilting, basting is the process of securing your quilt top, batting, and backing together before quilting it. 

Why is basting your quilt important?

This is super important because once you start quilting, you are locking everything in place. 

How do you make sure that your quilt top is lined up nicely with your backing? 

If you don’t temporarily secure them together, you might end up with corners of your quilt top with no backing or batting behind it. 

If the layers aren’t secured to each other, you might realize that your quilt top rotated off the other two layers while you were twisting and pulling it through the machine. 

Now that you’ve started quilting, it’s going to be the worst process ever pulling all the stitching out to realign and baste it correctly. 

What stitching goes in in 10 minutes, comes out in 4 hours of seam ripping. 

Or you’ll have to do some serious Frankenstein work to cover the corners that rotated off at the expense of the aesthetics of the quilt. 

So needless to say, this is an important step not to be skipped. But it also doesn’t have to take forever either.  

With the spray basting method you can be basted and ready to quilt in no time. 

Baste a quilt using the spray baste method for your first few quilts

If you are anything like me, on your first quilt, you hammered out the quilt top and are itching to try out machine quilting. 

Excited to get going you realize, “Oh there’s another step here, what is this basting stuff?”

Now that you’ve gotten excited about machine quilting your first quilt, you are rushing through the basting process to get back to the point where you can actually start quilting. 

Spray basting, while being very easy to make a mess physically, is very hard to mess up the actual basting process.

You are more likely to over baste than under baste. 

So when you are rushing to baste like this in your first few quilts, this method is better to use so even though you are rushing, you still get a great result. 

In addition to being more difficult to mess up, spray basting also bastes every square inch of your quilt, while others just basically tack certain spots down.

Using other methods leaves areas of your quilt where it can shift in small spots. 

If you are new and aren’t quite sure of how densely you need to baste using pins for other methods, you are more likely to under baste.

This can cause pleats and puckers in your finished quilts. 

Spray basting makes contact with the entire surface of your quilt top, so absolutely nothing will shift later. 

It’s a great starter method to use so you get the feel of what a successfully basted quilt quilts like.

If you get a few quilts done and find you don’t love this method, by all means, experiment with different methods to see which you prefer the most. 

How to Spray Baste a Quilt

Supplies needed:

Table
Basting spray
Batting
Backing
Quilt top
Goo Gone (For potential clean up)

Step 1: Lay the batting out

Batting is typically packaged up small and folded a million times. 

Sometimes when you unpack it, it will be creased and wrinkled everywhere. 

While you don’t HAVE to iron your batting, sometimes you might find it gives you a better result. Try both and see if its worth your time. 

The one thing you DON’T want to do is prewash the batting. Without quilting holding it together, it will very likely fall apart. 

Once you’ve unpacked it, lay it out somewhere so it’s not folded any where.

When I spray baste my quilts I typically use my dining room table to lay everything out. Its much easier than crawling around on the floor. 

Step 2: Double check the batting size

Once you have it laid out, it’s a good idea to just double check that it will fit your quilt top.

I’ll usually lay the quilt top on the top of it quickly before getting any spray out, just to double check, and then pull it back off.

It wouldn’t be fun if you got done basting the backing just to find out that you grabbed the wrong size batting by accident.

Grabbing a size too big is okay, but grabbing a size too small won’t fit the quilt and you’ll have to get different batting to fit.

Step 3: Set the backing on the batting

Take the backing and fold it half, preferably along a pieced seam in the middle if it has one. If not, use pins to create a reference line along the center.

We are going to use this reference seam/pins to keep us as straight as possible on the batting and help us line up the top later. 

Take it by your reference middle line and line it up approximately along the center line of the batting.

Being exactly in the middle of the batting isn’t terribly important since the batting and backing will get trimmed down to size later. 

We just want to make sure there is enough to center the quilt top later on the backing. 

Leave it folded in half with right-sides together.

Why do we need to do this?

If you just throw your backing fabric down, you may have it rotated on your batting.

As long as the backing is big enough that the top can still fit it’s not the end of the world. 

However, if you are using a backing with a repeating pattern, by having it rotated, the pattern on your backing will be tilted when you finish the quilt instead of squared on your backing. 

This is especially important when you have lines going down your quilt backing.

The middle reference line we made earlier will help to minimize this effect, even if we ended up a little wonky with the backing.  

Step 4: Start Spraying

Starting in the middle, work out to the top edge, spray the backing fabric one pass at a time and slowly unfold the backing towards the top edge working out any folds or bulk as you go.  

Any time I do a pass with the spray I’ll do it the full width of the quilt and only as wide as the bottle naturally sprays.

Smooth that much out until you’re happy with it and then do another pass and do the next 8 inches or so until you reach the far edge of the quilt. 

The first time I did this I sprayed the whole backing at one time – BAD IDEA.

If you spray the whole side and then try to lay it out, it will inevitably start sticking to itself and make the process 10 times harder. 

It’s like grabbing a huge piece of cellophane and struggling with it sticking to itself instead of the plate you are trying to cover. 

Going a little at a time will make it much more manageable and significantly less frustrating.

Running out of Basting Spray?

Be sure you are always spraying your fabric layer, not the batting layer. 

If you spray the batting, it will just absorb the adhesive and you will end up going through TONS of basting spray for one quilt. 

Spraying the fabric will be way more efficient. For a throw size quilt you shouldn’t even need a whole can to baste the whole quilt.

Take it from someone who went through two full bottles on their first quilt.

If you find you are running out, check to see if you are spraying the batting, or if you are just simply spraying the fabric layer too much.

Step 5: Smooth the tacky fabric to the batting

Think of this kind of like when you put a protective shield on a cell phone screen, or contact paper or wall paper on something. 

You are trying to smooth out any air bubbles and make sure everything has good contact with the batting. 

Any air bubbles and the backing fabric will likely stick to itself instead of the batting making wrinkles and pleats in the fabric before you ever start quilting.

Fortunately, the adhesive doesn’t dry straight away, so if you get the backing sticking to itself instead of the batting you can pull it up and re-lay it a couple of times until you get it nice and smooth.

Work from that center line and lay the tacky fabric forward smoothing with your hands as you go.

When you finish one pass, spray and move on to the next.

Then just repeat the process a few times until you’ve finished that half of the quilt. 

When you’ve finished the first half of the backing go back to the center line, fold the un-basted side over the first side and start again going the opposite direction.

Step 6: Flip the whole thing over and start on the quilt top

When you’ve finished the backing turn the whole thing over so the backing is face down and the bare batting is face up again. 

It should be adhered pretty well at this point. Be gentle with it, but you don’t have to worry about it falling apart.

With the batting face up and the right side of the backing face down on the table, take your quilt top and fold it in half so right sides are together. 

We are going to repeat the process with the quilt top.

Keeping it folded in half, line the folded edge up with the seam or reference line of the backing as best as you can.

All the way across the center line of the quilt. 

Once you’ve got it in place and you know all parts of your quilt top will have layers of batting and backing behind it, start the spraying process all over again.

Start at the middle again and take a second to make sure you are lined up with your backing reference line across the middle on your first pass with the basting spray. 

Then just like with the backing, start at the middle and work your way out to the first edge. 

Watch out for your seam allowances

This time you’ll need to be a little more mindful about how you want your seams to sit under the quilt top.

By pushing from the center, you may accidentally force a seam allowance that was intentionally ironed one way in the opposite direction causing lumps in the quilt top. 

As you push out the quilt top just double check that the seams on the back are good, and work your way out to the top edge. 

And when you finish the first half, head back to the middle and start in the opposite direction again.

Step 7: Seal everything in

When you’ve finished both sides of the quilt sandwich and they are confidently adhered to each other, take the whole thing over to the ironing table – if it fits. 

If not you can keep it right on your table, the batting will absorb the heat.

Press both sides of the quilt. You don’t need to go crazy with this, no starch is necessary if you use it regularly.

A bit of heat is going to help all that adhesive warm up and become sticky again, and then the small amount pressure from the weight of the iron will force it to really get a good adhesion to both the batting and the fabric.

This will give you a really good basting, because no part of the quilt sandwich is free to move even if it wanted to. 

In other methods like pin basting, your baste is only as good as the density of your pinning. For a lot of work, you still have free areas that are able to potentially shift. 

With spray basting, even your first time trying it, its fairly easy to get 100% basted. 

It’s a newbie proof method that gives you great results even with very little experience. 

Step 8: Cleaning everything up!

Congrats! You’ve officially spray basted your quilt!

Now that everything is basted and ironed, it’s time to quilt!

Well not quite. Now that everything is basted and ironed, it’s time to clean up!

I mentioned earlier, overspray can sometimes occur while you are basting the quilt. As this dries it will create a rough texture on your table or floors. 

Or they will be a bit sticky.

If you are planning to quilt where you basted, be sure to do a once over of your basting area with your hands to feel for any sticky or unusually rough areas. 

When you find some stray basting spray, take a little goo gone to it and it’ll clean up pretty quick. 

Hurray! Now what?

Now that you are successfully basted, you can trim away any excess backing and batting if there is any.

Just be sure to leave about 6-8 inches around each edge so you have something to manipulate during the quilting process. 

6-8 inches is the ideal amount.

If your quilt dimensions cut it close on one of the sides however, it’s not the end of the world. 

With that, you’re off to the quilting races! 

Need some ideas of what to quilt? Check out my machine quilting posts!

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