I am getting ready to start a Dear Jane quilt as soon as the software comes. I can remember when I was little I would go stay all night with grandmothers and friends grandmothers or other relatives and the quilts they had always seemed very heavy. I love that heavy quilt feeling when sleeping. The quilts I make today with poly or warm and natural do not have that very heavy feeling. Does anyone know what I can use to get that feeling? Do you think I could use a Double layer of batting?
Has anyone ever tried that ? (I am going to hand quilt)
Hope you dont think I am strange. LOL...

They may have been using wool Batting , that well make them heavy. :D

Some of the very heavy quilts were stuffed with an old quilt or wool blanket(s) and were tied, not quilted. Wool batting would give more of a heft to your quilt and be warmer.

double warm and natural might work, but the key to those old quilts being heavy was the fabric...most of the time they pieced scraps onto old flour/sugar sacks and the backing was the same, bleached out flour/sugar sacks that were made of grid iron muslin! That fabric made for a heavy quilt!
and some times if up North they used old wool blankets for batting, and sometimes even another old quilt!
I have seen it all....

the only heavier quilt is denim/flannel or polyester from the 60's! yikes is it heavy..hehehe

I remember well the weight of quilts when visiting my grandparents. Some winters I slept under 4-5 quilts. They were batted with cotton, most of the time the quilter made the batting as well. I can't remember hearing anyone talk about how they made them. Have any of you. I suspect the other materials were heavier as well.

You might get the 'feel' you are looking by using two battings or I believe there are heavier ones available.

The heaviest quilt I've ever made was made with a matress pad for batting. One of my sons loves it.

I doulbled warm and natural batting. It was warm and heavy. With wool batting does it get washed in a washing machine or does it have to be dry cleaned?

Is wool batting hard to quilt thru ??

Are you sure, it wasn't just because you were small and the quilts might have seemed heavier?

I thought of that.. I wonder if you are right.

My Great Grandmother and Mom used to use multiple "sheet" blankets as batting. Remember those "sheet" blankets well...too bad can't find them now.

I had one when I was a kid, it was really heavy, it had thick cotton batting. It didn't seem as heavy when I grew up , I passed it on to my sister when I migrated to Australia.

Not anymore then anything else is. :D

dont do it 1] not good for your body which needs to move freely-----2]hand quilting through too thick a batting would be a night mare---you could sleep under 2-3 quilt[an excuse to make more]

I am working on a quilt right now (65x75 ish) and I think it weighs about 50 pounds. lol we will see how it is after washing.

I wonder, if you could get your hands on a wool army blanket if you could use that as batting it would be heavy. However I don't know how hard it would be to quilt!

If I remember correctly, the old time heaviest quilts were not quilted, they were tied. The ones Grandma made seemed to be made with heavy, scratchy fabrics, blanket batting and a soft backing. Probably a flannel sheet.

But it sure was comforting to pull that heavy quilt over me, cuddle down in my flannel gown, snuggled deep into the big pillow and listen to the wind hurling rain at the window in the bedroom.

Now that's an idea! :idea: I have a couple of them that don't fit any of my beds anymore. Thanks! Since I don't hand quilt this should be just fine.

Before you use double warm and natural, it really isn't made for hand quilting especially a double layer.

Make them out of old jeans, put in a light batting, back with flannel. I made one for my daughter and she loves it but it takes three men and a boy to lug it around. It is really heavy!

Double knits with a light batting and any kind of backing will also make a heavy quilt.

I had a heavy quilt like that a long time ago and my Dad stayed over one week end and said it gave him ingrown toe nails it was so heavy. LOL

I remember that "heavy feeling" also. My grandmother had used old wool army blankets for the batting and they were all tied. Thanks for the memory!

You could also try the fusible fleece I think it is called

oh yesssssssssss (and the pillow was a feather pillow, wasn't it?)

Save yourself - don't use 2 layers of batting! Especially if it's W&N! My very first quilt was a double irish chain lap quilt that I was making for my grandmother. Thought it would be warmer for her if I used 2 layers of batting. I did SID in the 'chains' and flower designs in the plain blocks. The plain blocks weren't too bad with the double layer but the SID was painful with a capital P. But who knew? I did get through it with the help of some needle nosed pliers and she loved it so it was worth it in the end but I really don't know that it made it really that much heavier. Several quilts later my SIL said the one I made for them amazed her at it's warmth with a single layer of W&N. She asked me to make a quilt for my niece as her room is frigid in the winter. I used a single layer of W&N and used flannel for the backing. I swear that child will never move a muscle under that quilt!

I make comforters for a friend. I don't call them quilts as they aren'tquilted. I piece 4-inch squares together, put a blanket in the middle and flannel on the back. I tack them and then bind them with the flannel. It goes fine until I try to bind them and they are so heavy to wrestle around with. I sometimes bring the flannel to the front and stitch down with a decorative stitch. She loves them as they sleep in an unheated bedroom. She wants all I can make for her. I have another friend who cuts all her leftover project fabrics into squares and gives them to me. I have two big boot boxes of squares to get used up. Plus all the squares I cut myself when I finish a project.

Try looking at Lands End for the sheet blankets. I purchased one from them a number of years ago and it was the most wonderful blanket in the world. 100% and it was probably the only blanket that has ever fit on my king sized bed. It wasn't cheap - about $100 if I remember correctly but I could actually tuck it under the mattress and still have enough length to get a fold at the head of the bed and it had a drop on the sides to boot. Not sure what happened to it but I'm guessing it was destroyed by one of the dogs. And I decided I wasn't spending that much $$ for something for the dogs to destroy again. Hence the reason I'm not in a hurry to make the Mariner's Compass I want for my bed.

I use them all the time.They work out great and you don't have to quilt them really close because they are already pre quilted if you will.

I am working on a wolf quilt for the DH and the 80/20 batting isn't what is heavy, it is the polarfleece I am backing it with in addition to the batting. It is also king size so I have had quilt it in sections. Very heavy but it will be warm on our South Dakota winters/

I made a flannel quilt with W& N. The backing was flannel and the top was what I say looks like a brick wall, of flannel. It feels heavier than another quilt I made with just a flannel backing. Must be the flannel.

Many of our family quilts were "stuffed" with home made batting. We'd collect the wool jackets off of the rag mans' cart. Many were the old wool uniforms, cast away by the war returnees, as WWII had recently ended. Granny would dip them into the cauldron of boiling water for just a couple of minutes to kill anything that was on them. (She told me wool moths.) They were draped across anything that didn't move to dry. Then we'd cut off the buttons. (Usually the buttons had already been removed.) Granny and my aunts would cut the jackets into wide strips, cut the sleeves off and open the seams, and whip stitch them together to form blankets. The pieced quilt tops held the blankets together. There were a lot of tied quilts, but many were cross hatched. They were heavy and they were warm!

You are all so great... Thank you so much .. I love all the suggestions.. Now just wondering which to use... Maybe I will make a little sample and see what I think..

I have a very heavy quilt made by my great grandmother. It's a scrap quilt made out of cotton and polyester blocks, batting was one layer of cotton and the back is a very heavy sheet. The top is starting to come apart but the back still looks new. It's also tied with white yarn.

I'm going to guess not. Cotton batting, common back then, is heavier than poly batting.

If you don't use wool wadding, backing the quilt with upholstery material or tapestry-type material will do the trick.

When my two oldest girls left home I had a closet with lots of wool jackets, slacks, skirts, etc. I cut them up into simple squares and made quilts out of them. Put a light batting in them and backed them with cotton or flannel. They were heavy and very, very warm.

I used Quilters Dream Cotton. You can choose from different batt thicknesses & I wanted just that. I wanted a winter quilt for my last quilt & this one is very heavy. Hancock's carries it & make sure you go with the thicker batt. I don't like all my quilts as thin as what W&N is now. I love a good warm quilt in the good ole winter time!

Great idea.. Our thrift store had wool blazers very cheap.. I think like 1 or 1.50 I thought about buying some of those.

Two years ago I made a King Size quilt for my son. He has a king size waterbed and turns his heat down to 68 at night to save $$. I used a layer of fleece and a layer of poly quilt batting. Its a very heavy quilt, but also very warm. He loves it.

I made a quillo and when the pockets were stuffed and closed and the backing done. It was heavy, I think it must of weighed about 15 lbs.
I remember my grandmother making blankets. It was told to me that she made one quilt, but, that I don't know. She got herself army blankets. They are quite warm and heavy and she sewed around the edges of 2 together, and tied them. They were warm