I am working on my first quilt and just found this newsgroup. Thank you for being here!
I have finished machine piecing a shoo-fly quilt top and have proudly convinced myself that I was obviously born to quilt. ;-) I am about about to cut the borders (when I work up the courage), which I will hand quilt, while I plan to machine-quilt the patchwork area "in the ditch."
I would appreciate any thoughts you have on the relative merits and demerits of basting with a needle and thread v. using safety pins v. using basting spray. Something tells me that I'd be a total klutz with spray and that I would enjoy thread basting, but using safety pins seems to be in style among some quilters. (I am the proud beneficiary of some quilter's collection of decades worth of quilting magazines, which my SO picked up for me from the free-magazine bin at our local public library, and which magazines keep me confused and inspired about this particular question and quilting in general.)
I would also appreciate your input on the use of ready-made bias tape for binding the edges of quilts. My first/current quilt is made of some lovely taffetas and satins from some dresses my late mother made for me when I was a child, so I will probably want to fashion my own binding -- unless some fabulously beautiful ready-made satin-type carnation-pink bias tape of which I am unaware is currently being manufactured -- but I am curious about using ready-made bias tape for the future quilts I am already planning.
Edna Pearl