This may has been discussed at some other time, but I havent seen anything about it. What do we do with all that pile of left over batting? I use the small pieces to stuff the toy babies that we knit for PROJECT LINUS, but the larger pieces are too good to use for stuffing toys. How can we use them in a quilt or ????? I hope this gets some good suggestions, as I have a ton of smaller pieces from previous quilts. I once tried sewing the small pieces together, by machine, and that did not work well at all...

I use them for hot pads, or baby books. I sometimes (when desperate) but them together them do a zig zag stitch.

I sew mine together and use them in quilts too. I can't tell where they have been sewn, once the quilt is finished :wink:

You can use them for coasters, place mats, table runners, Hot pads, Trivits for the table. Tie a bunch in a knot and give to the dogs as a toy.
use with scrap fabric to play with FMQ.

On another board the ladies were discussing joining the pieces together with fusible interfacing. It was on of those "why didn't I think of that?" moments. They said the put the interfacing on both sides of the batting.

Since I'm trying to learn FMQ, my leftovers get "quilted".

I have used interfacing to join two pieces of batting together. I could not tell it when my quilt was done. I have also zig-zagged two pieces together and it worked just as well.

I cut them into 4" by 7" for ragged flannel quilts, and 4" by 4" for ornaments. The rest gets tossed.

Send them to someone who asks for batting scraps.

I do that do. I don't cut them to size. I just lay them between the layers. When I'm done practicing I cut them into mats for my church. They use them on the tables to protect the table cloths. Oh I bind them or have my students bind them for the extra practice.

I use the scraps of fabric and batting to fill doggie or critter beds for our local no kill animal shelter They are greatly appreciated.

I've joined two pieces together with the edge joining foot on my sewing machine. Zig zag works well too.

Patchwork Pam, good for you. I was going to say that too. One of the LQS that I go to used to collect them and make the beds but it got to be too overwhelming so now she ask that you make the bed yourself and then she takes them to shelters. They don't have to be very thick and know ahead of time that these will be used and then thrown away. To me this is by far the best use of left over batting and material.

You can use them in rag quilts, since the batting for those are cut into squares slightly smaller than the finished blocks. For the rag quilt I just did, all of the batting was cut from batting scraps that I had.

If you are talking warm and natural batt, it is very easy to zig zag pieces together. I use them like Jims Gem said.Tablerunners, even small quilts, placemats etc. Once they are in the project you can't even tell it is pieced. However I never use polyester batt so have none of that to deal with.

I use them in quilts using the "Cotton Theory"

I use them for my rag quilts.

Hi 4dogs. I just keep mine in a seperate bin and I always find myself looking through it for a piece for something. Also a friend I send stuff to uses it to make dog and cat rag quilts for the cages at the humane society so when I send her breakeables or a box to fill space I just wrap the batting around everything. And that way I'm not paying for bubble wrap either. :-D

I use the batting and stitch it together. Then I use if to make pads for the Cat rescue shelter. They love them for the older animals!

I join them edge to edge by zig-zagging also. You can never see the seam or feel it if you join them side by side, abutting them. Good luck!

thanks for all those suggestions......I did try sewing some together with zigzag...I was using batting from my fabric outlet (sells for 1.50 a yard)...it somehow caught the needle threader in my Bernina, and pulled a piece of it out of the machine.........the needle threader still works, but that piece is missing that held the thread for you.//oh duh...it will cost around $30.00 to replace that tiny staple looing piece, so I am hesitant to try sewing it by machine..however, I could do it by hand... thanks all!

I haven't made anything using the "Cotton Theory" method. Did you enjoy the process? How diffcult is it? I have a couple of her patterns and a video for placemats.

I always keep a little piece of batting near me while I'm hand quilting, because the ends and extra pieces of thread stick to it and stay contained.

I have also zig zagged my warm and natural or warm and white (I would do it by hand with other kind sof batting). Or as others have said, save it for smaller projects like potholders, mini quilts, maybe a quilt as you go project ....

Cheers!
Rachel

I'll take leftover batting. Use it in my crochet creations. [email protected]

Larger pieces and strips I'll zig zag together. Some scraps go for FMQ practice. Or you can use squares for Quilt As You Go. :-D

Me, too, love that long zigzag stitch and not a problem one when I've sew them together to use in a quilt.

I used up alot doing Fun and Done where you quilt each block separatly. Bayside quilting has a video on this method. You cut your batting into 7 1/2 in squares.

RoseMarie,
Thanks for the info for bayside quilting....The video was very interesting.

Ditter

or fun'n'done

or that flip and sew thingy

this is what I do too

This is probably wrong, but I use smaller pieces of poly batting to wipe away little pieces of thread on my cutting board, ironing board, around my sewing machine. I don't always have my Swiffer handy but I usually have batting.

My 5"wide (or less) scraps get cut up to use as a dust pad on my swifter...picks up the threads like a charm...then use my dustbuster to get the fine particles of dirt or sand that the pad didn't hold.

I use my batting scraps in quilted purses and tote bags or placemats.

One of my quilting groups will spend a day a few times a year where we get together and ZigZag sew the pieces together to fit some of our quilts as batting. Once I had 4 different kinds of batting and I asked about that. Our very skilled [and I mean this!] leader said it didn't matter as it was for charity/utility quilts. Guess what? once it was in a quilt you really didn't notice the difference.
This from a group that does over 1000 charity quilts a year.
It works.
Smaller pieces of batting go to the Humane society group and they use that for pet beds/blankets they make.
AliKat

I keep a scrap of batting by my machine for loose thread. Then I can throw the whole thing away.

Great idea.

I use them for table runners, wall hangings, sometimes I cut them into 5" squares then I have them ready when I want to make a rag quilt.

I piece mine together using my "three step" zig zag stitch. I think a regular zig zag leaves a little ridge when the two pieces come together. The three step does three stitches one way and then three stitches the other way and doesn't leave a ridge. I use left over pieces for small projects like table runners or wall hangings.

When I have left over pcs of batting too small for quilts I stuff a pillow for cats or dogs and give them to an individual pet owner or to my vet