Piecing Together Quilt Batting
Heather ThomasAfter a quilt has been layered and quilted, most times there will be some excess quilt batting that needs to be trimmed away from around the edges. Rather than throwing away all of your smaller scrap sizes of batting, save them and learn how quick and easy it can be to piece together small pieces of batting- Heather Thomas shows you how.
Batting
Quilt batting comes in all sorts of different sizes and materials. You can find cotton, polyester, blended and many other types of batting as well as batting in crib, twin, queen, king and other sizes. How to choose the right quilt batting will depend on the project you are making and the end result you are wanting. However, no matter what type of quilt batting you choose, you can use Heather’s method of piecing together small scraps of batting into larger pieces so you can always get the most use out of your quilt supplies.
Piece
When piecing together small pieces of batting Heather first explains that you need to have a perfectly straight edge on both pieces being stitched together. This is because the pieces are laid next to each other and then stitched, rather than laying the pieces right sides together and stitching. Heather explains that she pieces the batting together this way to ensure that the batting remains flat. When applying batting to a quilt you don’t want to have any wrinkles, puckers or other imperfections that could shows through the quilt top. Heather demonstrates how to stitch the pieces of quilt batting together, explaining what type and size of stitch she is using. She then explains that any small waves in the batting that can occur when
What is the best way to remove wrinkles from batting?
Hello Sandy,
Thank you for contacting us. A quick and simple solution is to throw the batting in the dryer with a damp washcloth (or spray the creases with water). Let it tumble on low for 5 – 10 minutes, then spread the batting out, smooth it flat and let it rest for a few hours. There may still be some faint creases but those are generally faint.
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I have done this for years. I call it Frank-en-Batting.
I overlap the pieces about 1″ and use a rotary cutter to make a scallop that wanders from one side of the inch to the other. The pieces butt together nicely. I use a bit of blue masking tape to hold the pieces in place, then sew the zigzag to complete the join. The tape is removed as I go. This avoids a ‘line’ inside the front and back. Once it’s quilted, no one could notice the join.
I use a lot of high loft polyester batting in babies floor quilts, what is the best way to join this batting?
Hi,
Abutting the edges and zig-zag stitching is still probably going to be your best method for joining this batting. Especially since it is a higher loft batting you wouldn’t want to stitch it together in a way that would create seam allowance bulk.
Hope this helps!