I made mine 8 yrs ago. I did not use batting. I used a variety of fabrics and when all the blocks were sewn together that is when I did a lot of machine embroidery on mine. I also did some hand stitches such as a spider web and spider. I was lucky enough to find light weight black corduroy fabric that already had red roses embroidered on it!! I tried to post a picture of it here but it didn't work. If you want you can go to my profile and check it out.