Are All Battings Created Equal

I belong to a group on Facebook of quilters, I'm actually one of the browsers, by that I mean I don't often (if ever) say anything but I am there and do read the posts.  Recently I've seen a lot of posts about batting and they are actually starting to drive me a little batty!

So lets talk about batting.  Batting is the material that goes between your backing and your quilt top.  It is there to add warmth to your quilt.  There are many different types of batting from all polyester (offers no additional warmth) to all cotton (is a natural fiber and does add warmth) and wool (the absolute warmest, lightest and nicest batting available in my opinion).

I recently had an opportunity to take some pictures of quilt batting to show why I stay away from 'big box' stores batting.

One of the things that you want out of your batting is an even distribution of the material.

See the 'shadow' on the lower right part of the above picture?  That is the black backing showing through the batting.

If you look at the upper left portion of this picture, you can see that the batting is much thicker than it is on the right side of this shot.

The above picture really shows the uneven distribution of the batting.

When a quilt using this batting gets washed what is going to happen is the quilt is going to be inconsistent in how it looks because the batting material is so inconsistent and the warmth offered will also be inconsistent.

The batting brands that I have found to be consistent and nice to work with are as follows (from my least favorite to my favorite):

Warm & Natural

Warm & White

Quilter's Dream Select

Quilter's Dream Wool

Warm & Natural & Warm & White are available at JoAnn's, Quilter's Dream is available at Quilt shops or from your Local Long Armer.


Happy Quilting!