Batting Question
 

I have just finished hand piecing my EPP grandmother's wild flower garden quilt. Now I want to hand quilt it. Since I've never hand pieced or hand quilted before I could use some help.

What kind of batting is good for hand quilting? Cotton, wool, poly? And if you have a favorite brand that would be helpful.

Thanks,

Joan

I like Warm & Natural or Warm & White, both are cotton and low loft.

Wool would be my first choice, and I use Quilter's Dream wool. Quilter's Dream cotton as my second choice if the price of wool is an issue. Personally, I don't like hand quilting through the scrim of W&N at all and I don't use poly for anything.

I am not a hand quilter. But I have heard that wool is wonderful for hand quilting.

I like warm & natural cotton. It's what I'll be using for my GFG as soon as it gets cool enough to sit under a quilt to hand quilt it. Do you have any pictures? I'm sure it's lovely!

I love the Warm Company batting but not for hand quilting. Wool is easier to needle and many quilters like polyester or poly blends. Warm and Natural is a bit thick and stiffer due to the scrim. I'd say make some smaller sandwiches and see what works for you.

I learned recently that there is an up and down side to batting. Its' easier to sew if the punched side is up

I love hand quilting and have done a few. Do you have a quilting frame or will you be quilting in a hoop? If this is your first hand quilting, I would suggest that you take a few scraps of batting that you have around and make a sample sandwich for practice. I've used warm and natural but I'm not fond of it for hand quilting. It is great for machine quilting. My reasons are that it is dense and in my opinion, harder to get small stitches. The thinner the batting, the smaller stitches I am able to make. I used a cotton/poly blend on the last quilt I did by hand and the stitches turned out so nice. I don't remember the brand. I got it at my LQS and it was for summer weight quilts. I've never worked on wool so I can't give any ideas on that. Good luck. Let us know how it goes for you.

Wool or silk batts hand needle the most easily.

I believe that's only Warm and Natural. Most battings (such as Hobbs 80/20) do not have an up and down side.

Any batting with scrim will be harder to hand quilt. Warm and Natural is needlepunched through scrim.

Wool is the nicest to hand quilt. Needles easily and the result is very nice. My choice would be Hobbs wool.

If not wool, then Hobbs 80/20 is easy to hand quilt and has a bit of loft and softness to it.

It's not only the fiber content of the batting that makes it easy or difficult to quilt. How the batting is manufactured makes a huge difference. Loft affects it too. I wouldn't want a high loft batting for that reason.

Hobbs and Dream Wool are both wonderful for hand quilting. They needle beautifully and are a joy to work with. Hobbs Heirloom cotton is also nice. W&N would be my last choice-only if I could not find anything else, or any other battings with scrim. Those battings are made for machine quilting and can be very difficult to stitch through.

I haven't done any hand quilting but I have heard from other quilter's that Dream Cotton is what makes the needle go thru batting like a warm knife goes thru butter. I wouldn't use either Hobbs or W&N because they have scrims embedded in the batting.

The only Hobbs batting that uses scrim is Hobbs Heirloom Natural with Scrim. Hobbs 80/20 does not have scrim, nor do any of its other battings, including cotton battings.

Thanks Patski for this. Nice to know.

What is Scrim? Humm, another thing to learn about quilting...

I hand quilt with W&N all the time. Don't really have issues but then again, I've not tried others so can't really compare. My friend uses Quilter's Dream 100% cotton to hand quilt. Does have a lovely drape. If it were an 'heirloom' quilt for myself, I'd be very tempted to use silk. Feels divine!