Glue Freaking Basting!

I have something I want to tell you about, but it's not something I invented.  I just wanted to get that straight in the beginning.  You may already know about this because it's become very popular lately.  That's okay, because I know I'm just jumping on the bandwagon, but I want to share with you how much I like it anyway. It's called glue basting...or I call it glue freaking basting...because I like it so much!!

You can read about glue basting from Cristy Fincher on her blog here!  She is the one I learned it from, and she has all kinds of information about it.  I highly recommend visiting her page.

So basically all you need to glue baste, is a bottle of Elmer's Glue, the special fine pointed glue tips from Cristy Fincher that you can purchase at purpledaisiesquilting.com or sharonschamber.com, and an iron.  I was lucky and won the glue tips in a giveaway, but they are very inexpensive.  

That little tab on the top of the glue tip is from a clothing tag.  It just fits perfectly in there to act as a lid.

Now all you do, it's just as simple as this:  Take the pieces of fabric you are going to seam, run a thin line of glue along the edge of one side, place the other piece on top, and briefly heat set the edge with the iron.  

There you go.  It's done.  Now sew your seam and see how easy it is.  It doesn't move, it doesn't pucker, it keeps everything in line so you can have perfect seam, and it makes sewing go by so fast.  

Some may think that glueing is going to be time consuming, but I personally don't think it is.  Pinning takes time too, but this just is so much easier to me than pinning.  Then you may say, "Well I don't pin smaller pieces".  Well I don't usually either.  But that doesn't always turn out so accurate.  If you are doing a quick baby quilt, then yes, you might not need to do the glue basting.  But if you want all your quilt seams to match up, this will help a great deal.  

The first time I tried this method, I was sewing large pieces together.  I made this Big Star quilt by Jeni Baker, that later turned into a Big X, with borders.  I thought I would test it out on this, but soon realized that sewing long pieces of fabric together with glue basting is the BEST way to go.  

I had to climb in a tree to take this picture. :)

Do you ever get annoyed when your fabric shifts, even though you carefully pinned the entire seam?!?  I do!!  Sometimes a walking foot will help with this, but I have found that glue basting works even better! The fabric doesn't shift because it can't shift.  So really, you could use glue basting for anything from curtains to dresses.  Anything that may slip or shift, even if you use pins or a walking foot.  It just makes life sew much easier.  :)

And the cool thing is, just spraying  a little water on it will undo the glue if you made a mistake or don't want it there.  Elmer's Glue is washable, so once your project is thrown in the washer, it all goes away.  But really it's such a small amount that you don't really notice it anyway.  

Look how nice and straight these fabric strips turned out!

And of course, it's always nice when your seams match up like this:

Fabric by Bari J. from Art Gallery Fabrics

I also recently made this mini quilt by Elizebeth Hartman called Love Triangle.

There you have it, that's Glue Freaking Basting in a nutshell!