Black batting - Important?
 

How important is it to use black batting on a dark quilt?
My backing is black and my quilt top is medium shades with brighter sections, all in batiks.

Thanks!

Watson

I have made a few quilts with dark and black mat. and used white or off white batting and did not have any problems.

I've never used black batt, and I make lots of dark quilts.

I had a very dark, all batik quilt with dark backing. Used W&N batting w/no issues whatsoever. Go for it!

Long, long time ago, I used a black batting because the quilting police told me I had to. Now I am smarter and do what I want to do. It was for a hubby quilt. The odd thing is that it's so heavy. I know it was 100% cotton but it was thicker than usual. I quickly used it up and will never purchase it again, too heavy for Florida.

It might be good to do a small sample using your normal white batting and having the sandwich use the same fabrics as are in the quilt. Then you could get an idea of how the white batting behaves. Maybe the tightly woven batiks would help resist bearding too.

I have used Hobbs 80/20 black and love the weight of it. It's about the same weight as W&N or a little bit lighter. I don't find that it makes a difference in a darkly pieced quilt, unless the fabric in the quilt is a loose weave and the batting might show through. I don't have any fabric in my stash that is loosely woven, so it doesn't matter with my quilts. Most times I forget and just use W&N anyway. Since I buy it at Jo-Ann's with a 50% off coupon, it is a lot more economical to use.

Never had a problem using w&n nutural .........but I machine quilt, not hand quilt...perhaps that might make a difference.

I have made many quilts some light, and some dark. I have never had a problem with using light batting.

I have used black.

Just as it is important to audition your fabrics ... it is important to audition your batting!

However, the problem that I have found is that when I do a check of all the fabrics in the quilt, there tends to be something lighter, that I fear the black will shadow through, and make it look grubby and dingy. I often fall back to the beige/natural at that point.

Nothing wrong with black ... but be sure to check before you proceed, so you are not disappointed later.

I have used black batting on two quilts where the background fabric was black. On one all the other fabrics were batiks and on the other it was a mix of batiks and regular printed quilting cottons.

On one, ( http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...l-t270708.html ) I got some shadowing through the lightest yellow batik in the center star. On the other, ( http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...p-t127559.html )

which I hand quilted, I got no shadowing on the lighter colors. Not sure if it was because of the less dense hand quilting or not because it is the same yellow batik fabric in both.

In the future, I will only use black batting in a predominantly dark quilt. If it has any light colors at all, I will not use it unless I line the light fabrics.

I usually use dark batting when I have a dark quilt backing.

Nope, never noticed that it did.

I used black batting (Hobbs 80/20) for a customers quilt that had a black backing the front was all colors. I didn't want to chance some bearding because the fabric was looser weave than normal. Had to special order it so I ordered 2 so I would have it in case I need it again.

Thanks, everyone. These are tightly woven batiks, so after reading all your replies, I think I'll be OK using a regular batting.Watson

Use black batting ( Hobbs) When I make quilt with black backgrounds and black backing. ( like my Backyard Gathering quilt- which is wool appliqué on black flannel with black cotton backing) black batting is nice to work with. I haven't tried it on a quilt with multiple colors. I did use ( Dream green) batting in a quilt with mostly light fabrics, even whites and had No show through at all. It too was nice to work with.

I've never used black nor have I ever had issues with bearding even on the darkest of fabrics. Make sure you use the correct size needle for your project and make a small test...

When my quilter says black batting is the ticket, I say ok. Personally I don't think it matters, but I use what she recommends.
Just my2 bits.

I have not had good luck with black batting. Usually I go with W&N for darks and W&W for lights.

I've used black bat on several quilts with lots of black background and backing. Just don't want to risk bearding! I've used both Hobbs Tuscany and Hobbs Heirloom and recently have used the black poly from Keepsake Quilting (maybe Quilters Dream, but can't remember and their newest catalog doesn't have any bats)--actually on the quilt waiting for binding, I wanted to double the bat and used the black poly on top of a Hobbs Heirloom.

I've not had lots of problems with significant bearding, but recently saw a quilt that really had lots of white "pokies" on the black backing.

I haven't used black batting recently but have used it with Amish style quilts with good luck. I have made a couple of quilts recently with darker backgrounds (navy, forest green, black) and wish I had used black batting. I quilt using my domestic machine and usually the batting hangs over the edges until I trim it up when I'm done. The lighter batting rubs off on the darker fabric and it takes some work with a lint roller to get the fuzzies off.

I like to use black batting with a black background because the regular cotton batting leaves fuzz on quilt top, however I recently did one with a polyester batting and had no problem.

I never use black batting and use lots of black in my quilts. But I have never had an issue with the batting bearding out the stitching holes either.

I had a quilt that had some very white blocks. I wanted to tone down the starkness of the white so I used Hobbs Black 80/20 batting. I can hardly tell that it is any difference.

I just made a quilt with a large area of black background in which my longarmer did some beautiful quilting with multicolored thread. The judge said she noticed some bearding and it would have been better with a black batt.
She gave the quilt 4th place, which doesn't get a ribbon.

Way back when, the cotton came right from the fields and was never black and I have never seen old quilts with a problem with the white cotton used for the batting. I have never used black with my dark quilts and you would never know by looking at them what color the batting is.