Gained a little weight?

I just completed safety pin basting a small quilt top, only 42" x 60", but when I picked it up from the table it seemed soooooo heavy. For a second I thought, what the heck? I thought I bought low loft batting. Then it hit me -- there's about five pounds of large safety pins in it! Sometimes I just don't know about myself!

Seriously, when I pin baste, I don't kid around. Because I haven't done a lot of machine quilting, I want to be sure that nothing moves. The first one I did recently I didn't pin enough and I had "wandering" problems with the backing shifting relative to the top. Not anymore. I have a large tin of corrosion proof safety pins and I use them liberally. The only problem is reclosing all those pins to store them after they're taken out of the finished project. I dump the open pins in a bowl and sit down in front of "Law and Order" or some such nonsense, and only stick myself occasionally!