Need acquired UFQ advice.
 

I need advice from y'all. A friend gave me her mom's stash, they recently broke up her household. In it are two quilts that are sandwiched and ready to go. The batting is older poofy polyester batting. She started to hand quilt them and then stopped. I would like to finish them fmq and give them back to my friend. But have never worked with poofy batting. Should I take them apart and add thinner cotton batting or try to free motion over this poofy stuff. Any advice?

Also, I only have a small domestic machine that I quilt on, If you use the Polyester batting, you stitch length should be a little longer. (I am going from personal experience on that.)

I love Tartan's idea about the heart around the hand quilting. If the batt is too unwieldy, how about tieing the rest? I am sure the family would be happy just to have it completed. Not sure I would be comfortable wrestling with all that poly puff! Just an idea...

Just be careful because poly will enjoy shifting on you. Good Luck!

i love both of these ideas!

I knew y'all would have an answer! I never thought of tieing it! Thank you so much. I think I will do that. One is a star quilt and one is a sunbonnet sue. I don't know when she started it, but I am glad to finish it for her. I think I will look into the machine tieing. The parts that are quilted are pretty far apart. Thanks for the advice.

I use poofy batting a lot, i like the poof, its warm, snugly, and lightweight. For my personal quilts I don't like to feel weighed down when sleeping. Never had a shifting problem so far.

you could do a lot of tying by machine, to hold it all together. On one quilt I used the tiny circle stitch option in some triangles. worked fine.

I frequently tie my quilts by using the heart motif on my DSM. It holds well and children love seeing the hearts on their quilts.

I've done some machine tieing on smaller quilts, works great. You will still have to wrestle the quilt through the harp though. One caveat, the same spacing rules apply as they do in machine quilting, perhaps even more importantly.
Wash and wear on quilts that are tied creates a lot of shift and pull on the tied areas.

I'd make them no further than 4" apart.

All good ideas here, and happy new stash!

Love the heart idea, thanks.

Tying sounds like a good idea. (Yes, I looked up tying in my dictionary. Who would have known. Tying? Are you sure? LOL) I have the large quilt frame sticks that would hold the entire quilt and would be very easy to tie without getting puckers. I know of several people who have such frames - and the Amish or Mennonites would be able to help you out with that, too.

If it is going to be an heirloom quilt for the family, and not used often, I would pull the Poly Poofy stuff out. I was given a couple of my DMIL's to refresh "repair"and all were done with poly batting that just disintegrated. All that was left was a pile of sandy uuck, so I had to remove all the beautiful hand stitching she had done, change the batting and start over. I did them FMG in as close to the old pattern as I could. I don't like trying to save those old quilts, but they were in such dire need, and both of my SIl's were heartbroken by the polyester breaking down.

Well, I got my answer when I tried to fit it into the sewing machine. Much too big. So, I am taking out the stitches and adding my batting. That may be why she stopped to begin with.

So many great ideas here. Good luck & please post when you finish. I'm sure everyone would love to see what you done to remedy the problem

Please be sure to post pictures before you send them off to their destinations.

I agree with Tartan, although I am not an expert, she is.