Batting or wadding is the middle layer, and it provides that layer of warmth to a quilt. However, batting is important in other ways, too. Batting can affect the weight and utility of a quilt, and it can affect the loft or how the quilt stitches sit in the quilt. There are a lot of different types of batting: cotton, polyester, wool, cotton/polyester blend, bamboo, bleached, unbleached, and batting choice can affect the overall feel and look of a quilt.
The image shows an A-Frame wooden shelf with batting off cuts rolled up and prepackaged batting.
I use an 80/20 cotton/polyester blend, unless a client asks for a specific feel or weight or even loft to the quilt. 80/20 is 80% cotton and 20% polyester, and I use it most often because it has the good qualities of cotton batting, but it is a little bit lighter than a 100% cotton batting.
Image shows a batting roll with batting off cuts on top. I usually buy batting 108” wide on a 30 yard roll because I make a lot of different sized quilts. All of this batting is 80/20 and bleached.
T-Shirt quilts tend to be heavier simply because of the t-shirt fabric, so the 80/20 allows me to eliminate adding more weight. Plus I like how the quilt stitches respond to the blended batting and the loft it gives the quilt. Wool and polyester batting can be fluffier, and the quilting is more pronounced…meaning the loft of the stitches is higher. I want the T-Shirts to be the star of a T-Shirt quilt, so I like the lower loft I get from the blended cotton/polyester batting.
Of course we can also go all the way back to the definition of a quilt to see that batting or wadding is an integral part of what makes any quilt a quilt instead of a blanket, comforter, or coverlet. A quilt is really a quilt because it has a middle layer of batting!
Sending Quilty Love,
Ginger
Reading Now: I finished You Can’t Go Home Again and The Jane Austen Book Club. I have picked up another Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery, and Middlemarch by George Eliot. I also have to finish my Wonderwoman compilation, and I have another of those to read. Bleakhouse is waiting in the wings along with Daphne Du Maurier…maybe I will wait until fall for that one. I once read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway by the ocean, which is just the best reading experience. The waves lapping the shore while the boat rocks in the book. Maybe one day I will read Ethan Frome in a cabin in the depths of winter in New England. Do you have a book you would like to read in its place? OOOH….Bleakhouse in England….
Be kind. Kindness is everything.