sewnsewer2

I favor warm & natural or warm & white, it is easier for me to quilt and I don't sweat as much when laying under it as I do with the polyester.

MadQuilter

I use "warm and natural" for most of my quilts and "warm and white" for any light-colored backgrounds. I have used flannel in a baby quilt before.

When JoAnn's has a 50% off, I stock up.

minstrel

I started out using the poly, but most of my early quilts have quite a bit of bearding (and I HATE that), so for the past 4-5 years I've used only Warm and Natural. Love that stuff.

barnbum

I'm a Warm and Natural quilter.. I use the not bleached kind when I'm buying. My quilter uses the same brand--but I don't know if it's bleached or not.

Justquilting

I use warm & natural for everything!

Prism99

I prefer cotton over polyester battings every since I made two quilts -- one with poly, one with cotton -- for my niece and nephew. I happened to see both quilts many years later after they had both obviously been through the washing machine many times. The poly quilt was in terrible shape with the batting in lumpy balls throughout. The cotton quilt was soft and wonderful even though the binding on it was worn through in places.

For machine quilting, I like Blue Ribbon brand 100% cotton, which is the batting I used in the quilt above. (I hand-quilted it, which is a mistake with this batting.) I also like Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting (80% cotton, 10% polyester).

For hand quilting, nowadays I would probably test out Quilter's Dream or Fairfield 100% cotton (rinse and spin dry before using for hand quilting), as I have heard these are very good.

I don't use Warm 'n' Natural anymore because its drape seems stiff to me compared to other cotton battings (probably because of the needle-punched scrim). I did use it for quite a few years, though. It washes flatter than other cotton battings.

Not everyone likes the flatness and crinkliness of cotton battings. I think many people these days are used to comforters. To get a similar effect in a quilt, you pretty much need to use a polyester batting. I like the antique quilts, which are mostly the thin and crinkley kind because of their cotton batting. Once in awhile, though, for a wall hanging or specialty quilt I will use Warm n Natural or a polyester batting for their effect.

Lisanne

What is bearding?

If you don't leave huge chunks of the quilt unquilted, poly shouldn't ball up, should it? I've been sleeping under a poly-filled comforter these last 20 years (hope to have made some quilts eventually), not quilted small at all, washed it many times and it's still absolutely fine. So I can't see why poly batting should lead to such problems.

Good point about the flammability of polyester, especially for babies' quilts.

The poly batting I used for my class table runner was Soft n Crafty brand. The rest of the class used the instructor's suggested brand, Quilter's Dream. To me that was exceedingly flat. I preferred mine. I'm told the loft of the batting makes a difference, and of course you want a low loft for a table runner. When I checked my batting brand just now, I saw that the package says Extra Loft. Oops, but it's not that puffy, actually, only slightly more so than the Quilter's Dream. It wasn't at all hard to machine quilt or to hand sew on the binding.

bearisgray

I also used the Warm and Natural all-cotton - I washed and dried it before using it - didn't measure it before and after washing it, so I really don't know if it shrank or not - the instructions that came with it said to prewash if you preferred the flat look - and I do.

The quilts that I made with it lay absolutely flat with no puckering whatsoever.

Ninnie

Only warm and natural here.
I love the feel of it, and it hand quilts beautifully!

Prism99

Bearding is when the batting starts poking through the fabric and/or seams. Once bearding happens, there's no "cure". The most you can do is maybe shave the fabric to remove existing beards; however, more bearding will take place with usage and washing.