Thread: Battle of Batting

OK after yesterday wrestling and getting tangled in my batting I have to turn to my fellow quilters and ask what your secrets are to getting your batting cut square for a large quilt on a longarm frame. I mean really? If you all could of seen me yesterday...trying to get the batting the right size and nicely squared ... The batting grabbed me and sucked me into its soft web...here I was trying to fold it...no it had a mind of its own, it didn't want to be folded into a square, kept grabbing itself messing up my nice fold...LET ALONE TRYING TO GET IT IN POSITION TO CUT AND BEING SO THICK AFTER FOLDING IT TO FIT MY CUTTING MATT TO CUT. I mean really if you could of seen me...it was a scary movie in the making...BATTLE OF QUILTER EATING BATTING. It was like the batting engulfed me....what in the world is the correct way to cut a nicely squared batting? Please help and if I go missing please look in my batting!

Funny! Went searching for an answer but didn't find one for you yet, but I did find an article for long armers that was interesting reading. http://www.longarmuniversity.com/pdf...he_Machine.pdf Hopefully someone with a LA will pipe in soon for you if I don't find any useful info on the batting.

I have seen some people put their roll of batting on a wooden dowl and suspend it from the ceiling. Then they unroll it like pulling toilet paper off a roller and just cut straight across with scissors. My LA frame has a table on the back for laying out pantos. I store my roll underneath. When I want to cut it, I pull the roll out from the back of the table and pull off what I need and toss it over to the front (keeping the roll at the back) and measure what I need. Then I make a little cut on both sides. I line up those cuts on my back table and just run my scissors along the lip of the table aiming for the little cut on the opposite side. I have also cut with a rotary cutter but then I have to move the matt along underneath. Much easier to cut with scissors. I always cut generously, adding a few inches to be on the safe side. Usually I round up to the nearest 1/4 yard measurement. This just makes for easier record keeping of my batting inventory.

Well you guys have given me an idea....maybe a wooden dowel going across the bottom (I don't know where I would find a dowel that long) but I could hang the dowel or bar, put the roll of batting on and since I float my top and batting I could do as PaperPrincess says...quilt then cut it off at the end. BUT HAVING SAID THAT how would I unfold it because usually the batting is folded (my husband reminded me of that because when he walked into sewing room yesterday all he could do was to laugh as I was entangled up in batting ...folding unfolding trying to get it straight)! So PaperPrincess how do you deal with the folds? This is probably the easiest quandrom of quilting and I am making it into a mountain! Oh boy!

Go to the hardware store and look in the wood trim section for a sturdy closet pole...dowel rods I don't think are sturdy enough to hold something that big. Hope this helps!!

My batting is on the dead bar. it is folded in half and measures 98 wide when unfolded. I usually take the Measurement of my quilt and if it it below 90", I just unroll the batting up and over my longarm until I have the length needed. I use batting scissors and follow one of the bars to keep it straight. Rarely do I try to use a rotary cutter the trip batting because there is always a factory edge.
PM me if I can heelp further.