Do you prewash batting when making a jacket?
 

I have never prewashed batting even though I do prewash my fabric before making a quilt. I am going to make a quilted jacket using batiks & have washed the batiks. Do you prewash batting when making a jacket? I am not using the sweatshirt method, the blocks will be quilted to the batting. I never thought about the batting shrinking before. The batting is 80% cotton 20% poly.

If you don't preshrink every thing when you make clothing it may end up too small the first time you wash it. To preshrink batting, put it in the washer and fill with hot water. Turn the washer off!! Do NOT let it agitate!! Let it soak for 10 minutes or so and turn the washer to spin. Dry in the dryer. You'll need to take it out and rearrange it a couple of times. It'll roll itself into a ball and the outside will be dry and the center won't so you need to rearrange it.

Ditto! If you can, hang it out to dry! I just did a silk jacket with silk batting..glad I washed that batting first!

I always preshrink my batting for clothing. Only once did I learn that lesson the hard way. Sissor Queen is spot on for how to shrink the batting.

Thank you for your advice everyone. Thankfully I have a friend that has a top loading washer. Even the laundromats are front loaders.

I'm curious Gail. Why couldn't you use your front loader?

the front loader would be better than top loader... as the front loader is genter on fabrics... but you still don't want it to agitate, just soak a little in hot water, then spin out and I always put in dryer on high heat, make sure it shrinks up all it's going to!

Front loaders do not use as much water which would make it harder to soak I would imagin

I don't think you can stop the agitation in front loaders. At least I haven't figured out how to stop the agitation to just let the batting soak & then go directly to the spin cycle.

*****WARNING****** I once washed a piece of batting..... it came out in pieces!!!

I had no idea I was not suppose to let the washer agitate! Sure learned my lesson.:o

I am like you... I pre-wash all my fabrics..but have not tried washing any more batting since then.