I'm working on a quilt for my bed and almost ready to start quilting it by hand. I love to sleep under heavy comforter type blankets. What batting would be the heaviest but still let me hand quilt? Thanks!
Sarah

thick batting and hand quilting do not play well together. if you use polyester then the low loft if about the only one you can use to hand quilt. otherwise a cotton warm n natural type. have fun.

I agree with happyscrappy, thick batting and handquilting do not go well together. I've hand quilted a couple with wool batting. I think they feel real light. I'm currently working on one with Fairfield 80/20 batting and it is noticably heavier than the wool. The 80/20 needles pretty good as well. I've tried the Warm and Natural but just can't get my needle through it easily. Gave up and machine quilted the one I had all based with Warm and Natural.

Fat batting and hand quilting = fat swollen fingers !!

I'm handquilting my quilt, and let me tell you that sandwiched together....it's quite heavy! I'm using Quilter's Dream Select batting, and it's low loft but man is my quilt heavy!!! You probably dont need heavy batting.

I just finished hand quilting a full size quilt with high loft polyester batting from my local joann's store. I have used lower lofts in the past; both polyester and the warm and natural. I wanted to make my design 'pop' with a higher loft. It looks beautiful! It was really easy to quilt, too.

The very first quilt I made was for a Christmas present for my Mom and Dad. I used a high loft batt . At the time I did not know it was supposed to be easier so I kept going. It took me a year to complete. I will never do that again. My hands were about 25 years younger then and they hurt all the time.

i use two layers of Warm and natural in my kids quilts, I made two twins this way. I like them heavy.
I had NO problem handstitching them. I mean, if it was a chore I would not have done the second one LOL.
If you got a good sharp needle, that makes all the difference. For me stitching through mutliple seams is hard, but all in all stitching through batting never gave me any trouble. You can always test it out first. Make a small sandwich and see how it goes.

sarah, do you actually mean heavy? or did you mean thick? if you want heavy, the more quilting stitches there are, the heavier the quilt - fyi

Quilters Dream "Dream Puff" would be ideal - I've used it several times
http://www.quiltersdreambatting.com/dream-puff.htm