my grandmother used her old army wuilts they were made of Wool and sometimes old torn quilts beyond repair. My mother used double knitt material and it is hard to find today. Of course later in life they used gunny sacks as well and then 100% cotton and sometimes used sheets to back them...You name it and they used it 50-60 years ago...

Hello
Some time ago, I sent a picture of a block of my quilt. Well now I have finally finished it and let me tell you it is heavy with all the embroidery!! It was done in the Cotton Theory method of quilt blocks first and then assemble. The embroidery was done with bobbin work with a wool yarn. The pictures do not do this quilt justice like many of yours no doubt. Anyways sigh of relief it is done!!

Mrs Cotton, Your quilt is absolutley beautiful.. I am in aawww.

My DH loves the heavy quilt we have in the winter. I got it when I had to recover a quilt I had made years before.
My mother made my youngest brother a quilt wehn he was a teenager out of wool. It was so heavy he slid under the covers at night & out of bed in the morning and never had to remake the bed!

Ms Cotton, love your quilt, it is beautiful!!

Don't know that off-hand. You can probably Google it, or if you are going to buy some, read the care label on the package.

my mom and grandmother used old wool blankets for battings except for summer quilts ..... kept us so warm in the cold winter ....loved them

I slept under one recently at a friends. It was a wool patch quilt that her grandmother made, and it was heavy. I think it just had cotton or light batting, but the wool on the top added weight.

I have quilts from both my great grandmother and grandmother (one quilt is 120 years old), and they aren't especially heavy. I know that in one quilt there is a wool blanket as batting. And that almost all of them are feed sack, flour sack materials. But the king size quilt I am hand quilting right now is heavier than those old quilts.

Heavy quilt? I used an old polyester blanket in my first quilt (cotton/poly top) and it is a 100" square king size. That must be 30 pounds, easily.

Light quilt - cotton top and flannel back, no batting. Someone on the board calls them a summer quilt.

My grandma had them too! They used wool for the batting. I loved them! Thanks for bringing up such fond memories!

google "weighted blanket" and find that this theory is used as a therapy to help austic children (and others) sleep. Grandma was ahead of her time. Purchased my daughter one because she had difficulty sleeping, she LOVES it. Directions are given for making them but I chose to purchase one that could be laundered. Not the answer to your question but interesting.

I have 2 very heavy quilts on my bed now and the fabric feels like home decor fabric. It's thick and tough, but soft and pretty, yet the batting is very heavy and fluffy. Not sure what it's made of but talk about keeping warm in the winter! I don't think I can make one of these on my small machine, it is more of a long arm project. Either way, when I find them at yard sales or thrift shops I grab them since there are 6 beds to keep warm in the winter!

I wondered that too. DH has quite a few "quilts", made by his mother of course, if you know what I mean.

I'm pretty sure those "sheet" blankets were flannel. I still have a VERY old one that I slept under when I was a kid (60+years ago) and it is a heavy duty flannel. It is pink and coral and white large squares. No doubt it has shrunk as much as it's ever going to, so it would make a great batting for my next quilt but I'd have to be careful that the color of the sheet blanket doesn't show thru my quilt!

please don't try to hand quilt this if you use double batting, or some heavy blanket. It will be too hard to do. If you chose to do a heavy batting, just tie the quilt.

My relatives used old worn blankets for interlinings.

I'm no help in solving you heavy quilt situation, but I just had to chuckle because when I was younger I wasn't able to lift as much as I could when I "grew up". Now I must be getting back into that 2nd childhood age because things are starting to get heavy again. :shock: :thumbup:

If you want heavy.....use double knit polyester. One was given to me many years ago as a gift and it is so heavy I cannot carry it around let alone sleep under it.

Try double layers of flannel? That would have warmth and weight.

I live in the UK and bought an old cream WWII wool blanket and used that for wadding. It was easy to quilt through (I have to machine quilt now) and I thought a good weight for a quilt as I often feel 'modern' battings are a thin feel. My daughter is pleased with her quilt.
Hand wash or use either the handwash or the wool setting on your washing machine, seemed to work ok. I would certainly do it again. The only limitation is the size of these blankets as the singles seem to have survived better than the doubles which are rare.
By the way these blankets are sort of loosely woven compared to the modern fluffy felted look.

I am just finishing up two crazy quilts that are both very heavy and it is because I used muslin for the foundation then warm and natural for the batting and flannel for the backing. They are so heavy that in spots where I could I cut out some of the warm and natural before I put the flannel on the back.

When i was a kid here in america before WWII I remember my grandmother and aunts using those old double blankets inside the quilts that they made. They were made for double beds but woven twice as long (huge) and folded over to make a two layer blanket which was claimed to be warmer to sleep under. In our cold new england winters with upstairs unheated, two or three of those double blankets kept us warm! They were cream or light tan, sometimes with darker stripes woven into them. They cut them to use only one layer, and got three quilt linings from one unfolded blanket. They had treadle machines and stitched a stay stitch along the cut edge.
Like you, they said they were easy to quilt through. I can remember them arguing over who was going to get a piece!
I wonder if they were woven in England? I have a notion they might have come through Canada? Do you know? 81 year old Jeannie

I will ask around to see if anyone knows where they were woven, the blankets do seem very similar. Somehow lurking at the back of my mind is 'in Wales' followed by Lancashire but will get back to you if I find anything definite. I do think they were made for the Armed Services so the Imperial War museum might have the answer. I always look in the charity shops in the hope of finding them, they are scarce these days though.
Just think of all the pleasure they give to us in their second lives!

Thanks starryzar, In our lives so much has happened, and changed! The town of Berlin NH where I was born, was less than 40 miles south of the canadian border. Even today, people travel back and forth across the border with goods they have bought on "the other side" - so who knows?
My impression is they were just commonly widely used people blankets in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont...
I was born there in 1929, and saw them having been well used - 5 yrs before WWII.
I don't remember seeing them in Indiana, though, when we moved there in 1937.
It does sound like we are talking about the same kind of blankets though.
Thanks for any information you find. ( I would like them for quilting, but no chance here. This town is the same age as my mom!) Lucky you! Jeannie

Maggiemuggins, Your avatar is wonderful! Would like to know more about it. Hard to get the grin off my face.

either wool or warm and natural can make the quilt heavy

This is a machine embroidery design from Embroidery Library...there is a set of these kitties for christmas and they have sets of them for other occasions as well...I just couldnt resist getting them and made some gifts for family and friends for Christmas..they stitch out really well.

wool batting adds loft and fluffiness-without weight.

double batt would be very difficult to hand quilt.

back in the day= the small squares with all the seams added weight- many small blocks were created on a muslin foundation- an extra layer of weight- old wool or cotton blankets were re-purposed as batts...that is really where all that weight came from- if you want a really weighty quilt a flannel/denim one will give you the heft you desire- using a blanket in place of a batt- and using foundations...all add the extra weight

I had a neighbor from Korea 50 years ago. Her quilts were really pads they used to sleep on -on the floor- in the case of no mattress. That was heavy.