copycat

For those of you who have tried fleece , can you recommend a good quality brand that is tried and true?

Thank you!

meanmom

I have done it on a few quilts. I always buy the no pill fleece. I find it stays nice looking longer.

cindyb

It seems that JoAnns always has fleece at 1/2 price. I wonder about the quality.

klswift

I hate working with fleece because it 'moves' so much. When I don't want to use batting (either want a lighter quilt, doing a quick throw or unexpectantly ran out), I will use flannel either as batting, as backing or double layers for both. I love working with flannel.

cathyvv

I use the fleece from walmart. Pill resistant is my preference. Hobby Lobby has fleece as well, but is priced higher, but is a good deal if you can get it on sale.

johnette

I do it all the time with bamboo batting. I made one without batting, just top and fleece, but my kids prefer to have all three layers. Too hot for me. As far as how the quilt holds up, seems to be just fine. I spray baste and quilt on my DSM with a walking foot. I've bought all of my fleece at JoAnns when it is on sale. I hesitantly pieced some fleece for a bigger quilt and it did fine, too. I didn't have any trouble with "slippage" using the spray baste. I bind the quilts the normal way, generally using left over cotton from the quilt top for the binding.

Rose_P

I missed this thread when it went around last month, but since I just recently made two quilts like this, I thought I'd post some pictures so people who haven't tried it can decide whether they like the way it looks. The first 2 pictures are the front and back of a couch throw for our living room, made because I wanted to experiment with the fleece. Winter days are usually warmer here in the Dallas area, so a lighter weight quilt is good for daytime use. This is a no-pill fleece from Joann's, and it doesn't have a lot of stretch. I used basting spray and did most of the quilting with a single run machine embroidery design, using no stabilizer. I did walking foot wavy lines in the outer border because that's easier than trying to hoop in that area. The front is a panel that includes the black border, where I used decorative stitches from the machine. Then I wanted to define the "patches" so straight-lined stitched around them, which kind of messes up the design on the back, but it's not worrying me much. I did a normal binding with quilting cotton.

The second project I did using fleece for the back was for a friend in warm climate who was diagnosed with breast cancer recently. I'm showing the only picture I have of the back to illustrate that if you use fleece with a busy pattern, the quilting will not show up as much. Finally, there's a bit of the front showing the embroidery machine quilting and the machine decorative stitch I used in the borders. In all the pictures, these have been machine washed and dried one time. I didn't measure, but I assume there's somewhat less shrinkage than with my usual Warm and Natural, but still enough to give the front a "quilty" look. Using fleece seems okay to me for lightweight quilts that are meant to be used. I restrict the size to the width of the fleece, though others have said piecing it does not cause problems.

staceybard

This was what I was wondering. Is the cotton batting too heavy?