My friend, Charlene, recently introduced me to a new spray glue that is coming to the US later this spring. It’s called QuiKraft Tack by Siliconi.
I am telling you, people, that you want a bottle of this stuff!
Seriously. You will want this as sewing room staple. It’s fantastic, and I will use it to spray baste for a long, long time.
Here are my thoughts on the QuiKraft glue, and some rambling about machine quilting, so bear with me. I promise it’ll make sense in the end.
For many years I have sent my quilts out to my friend Regina. She’s a longarm quilter, and her work is incredible! I’ve sent my quilts out for two reasons:
- The quilts actually get finished and
- I wasn’t willing to put in the time to machine quilt my quilts.
Number 2 is the real doozie here in that my unwillingness to do the work meant my work didn’t improve. My quilting was okay, but I always wanted it to get significantly better. Sooooo, since this year is about me finishing projects, I decided that finishing them on my own would be part of the package. I know that won’t always happen, but it needs to happen more. It gives me a chance to work on my machine quilting, so it’s not all bad.
One of the reasons I HATE machine quilting is the basting process. It is tough on my back, and crawling around the floor is just not fun. I need a better table to baste (that’s coming soon) so I don’t have to suffer when I baste quilts on the floor….however, after using the QuiKraft I decided that I can stick to the floor for a little bit longer.
I decided to test the spray glue on Q man’s quilt. He painted the top, and I knew if I messed up he could paint another. That’s horrible, I know, but it’s also true. Like other spray glues on the market, it’s easy to use. You shake the can, spray about a foot from your project, and put the pieces together.
I started by taping my backing fabric to the floor (unlike this photo, remove threads that run across the center of your backing)
then put my (franken) batting on top of the backing fabric. Also not pictured, smoothed out batting.
Last, put your quilt on top to make the sandwich.
Once that’s was situated, I folded the top half of the quilt top and the batting onto itself. The goal here was to work on one half of the quilt at a time.
Shake the spray glue can well then spray it 10-12″ from your project. I sprayed the backing AND the batting. I sprayed about 6″ X width of quilt each time. After I sprayed, I carefully rolled/repositioned the batting that had been glued to the backing and worked my way up the quilt until I got to the top. I repeated this on the other side of the quilt to glue my batting to the backing.
After I glued down the batting, I repeated the same process to glue the quilt top to the batting to complete my quilt sandwich.
Regarding gluing the sandwich together:
- It’s MUCH faster to spray baste than pin baste
- This glue is VERY easy to use
- Low VOC, which is nice since I’m basting this on my basement floor. There is hardly ANY odor so I didn’t have to worry about passing out from fumes.
- It was very easy to clean up any over spray from my floor (truth – my kids may have done that with their socks)
- The glue works.
There are many reasons I liked working with the QuiKraft glue, but I think #5 is what sticks out in my mind the most (get it? sticks? glue?). I’ve tried other spray basting glues before and never felt they worked well enough for me, or I felt the need to iron my sandwich together AFTER spray basting to make sure all the pieces were secure.
Anyhow, working in 6″ X width of quilt was manageable and allowed me to smooth out any small inconsistencies in my sandwich as I worked. I didn’t have a huge area on my quilt, backing, or batting with glue and the inability to glue it down cleanly. Smaller working space meant I could accurately spray baste my quilt and get it down securely.
I’m about halfway through quilting Q man’s quilt, and haven’t had any problems. No part of my sandwich has come unglued while I work and that’s made machine quilting significantly smoother than pin basting or having not-so-great-sandwiches come apart for one reason or another. I haven’t had any gumming on my needle, either. Another HUGE bonus.
Because my sandwich has been so secure, quilting has been a breeze. 
I have 3 more rings to quilt. Knowing I’ll be able to tackle those with relative ease and no sandwich issues makes me significantly less anxious about the process. The right tools make everything enjoyable.
Close up shot. You can see where I needed to replace my stippling needle. You can also see my work on spirals. Spirals are the death of me so I’m really working to get those down. I don’t know why I have such a mental block on them.
I highly recommend this project, and I’m eager to spray baste another quilt later this week.
To keep up with news, I recommend you follow @quikraft_siliconi on Instagram. I know they have some fun plans for the spring, and this way you’ll be the first to hear!
Acrylic with fabric medium on PFD. Quilted on my Bernina 770QE with Aurifil 50wt. thread. 75/11 needles.
