OK, maybe I'm asking the obvious, but I've never seen this addressed in a book, and our teacher never told us to do it in our class.

The first few quilts we stretched for quilting didn't stretch well. There was extra fabric in spots; not horrible, but enough for us to notice, even though we stretched them on the DR table and used binder clips to keep them taut. On the last three that we have done, I looked at the batting as we took it out of the package and it had all kinds of wrinkles and waves. So, I took them to the ironing board and pressed them with steam. Those quilts stretched beautifully and had no hint of bunching after they were quilted. This is definitely going to become an item on our checklist going forward.

Thanks,

Darren

Hmmm never thought of that. Thanks!

I often press my batting...it lays down so much better that way!

I press Warm & Natural with steam - not just to get wrinkles out, but for shrinkage before making the quilt sandwich.

I never thought about until I did my last quilt. The Warm and natural had wrinkles in it galore. I used my hands to try and smooth it out. I didn't end up with wrinkles after quilting, thankfully. I think it would have saved me a lot of aggravation if I had iron the batting.

I iron the top and bottom so I might as well iron the batting too. Less wrinkles is always good!!!! LOL!!

Since you can't press the poly batting, I just let it relax. Lay it out, go watch a tv show or do something else for about an hour and it smooths out some. Or, if it's a smaller quilt I hang it on a design wall to sandwich and the wrinkles fall out more quickly.

I alway iron the folded area of the batting when I use warm and natural. makes it much easier to manage.

Never thought of this before, mainly b/c I used only poly batting and made just one quilt with warm and natural, which seemed to lay flat, but I have to check next time. Anyway, thanks for this idea.

Yes I would want the batting wrinkle free.

If that meant laying it out for a day or two or even steam pressing. Why go to the trouble of making sure your top and bottom are pressed and have a wrinkled middle.

Isn't it wonderful to figure things out by yourself! Great job!

I press the folds on poly and warm and natural by laying a damp dish towel over the fold line and to prevent the batting from stretching I just set the iron on the fold till it relaxes with a warm iron.