April 15, 2010

I finally get to write about something I’ve been wanting to get to since January. Now that my quilts for the new book are finished and safely arrived at the Martingale offices, I can actually pick up my head and look around!

Before the Road to California show in January, I received a very nice invitation from Darlene Christopherson, esteemed appliqué artist and Marketing Developer for the Pellon Quilt Division. Pellon was having a booth at the show, and Darlene invited designers to come by and receive a sample of Pellon’s new Legacy brand battings.

Naturally, I was happy to do so. I was presented with a sample pack of 15 different battings. Wow, that’s a lot of styles! I’ve been itching to stitch up some samples to share on the blog. What came to mind are some ancient appliquéd hearts that have been marinating in unfinished-land for you wouldn’t believe how many years. Let’s just say that when you see some of the fabrics you may take a trip on the hot tub time machine back to the 80s. Apparently when I was a young green quilter I thought I would appliqué a heart out of each fabric in my stash, onto bleached muslin. Well you can imagine how long that lasted. Sigh, the naiveté of youth.

Gentle quilters, I didn’t take the time to hand quilt any of them, just whizzed them up on the Bernina with some swirlies. Some of the swirlies are more “interesting” than others and I make no claims about my machine quilting. Sorry you can’t feel these But I hope there’ll be some useful information here.

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batting-2

batting-3

batting-4

batting-5

batting-6

batting-7

batting-8

batting-9

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I did the poofy poly and wool ones too, though these probably aren’t the styles you’d choose for machine quilting.

batting-13

batting-14

And last but not least, how about this dramatic back batting?

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I like a low-loft batting myself, and all of the first 12 were fine and dandy for what I do. It’s very interesting the different fibers used… you can choose from cotton, poly, linen, flax, bamboo, soy, rayon, and blends of more than one. When I first started quilting there was Mountain Mist and Mountain Mist. We have so many choices now!

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

Comments

7 Responses to “Batting bonanza”

  1. betsy on April 15th, 2010 5:16 pm

    Very interesting Kay. Nice to have so many options now

  2. Debbie St.Germain on April 15th, 2010 7:05 pm

    Fun to see the battings and how they quilt up.

    Debbie

  3. darla on April 16th, 2010 5:19 am

    Is there some way I can enlarge each pic so I canread your notes on each batting type?
    D

  4. Kay on April 16th, 2010 7:50 am

    Darla, try zooming in (enlarging) your view in your web browser. On a Mac it’s Command + , not sure on a PC, anybody know? It should be in your browser settings somewhere. BTW those are descriptions from the manufacturer. They were on one sheet and I cut them apart.

  5. Patricia on April 17th, 2010 7:52 am

    It would be interesting to see what happens to each backing/block after a dozen washings.

  6. Sandra Davidson on April 20th, 2010 3:46 pm

    Hi Kay I just wanted to thank you for talking to our little group last Thursday night. I learnt some interesting tips from you and they will help me in future. I am happy I found your site so I can keep up with new things, like about the batting.

  7. Kay on April 21st, 2010 7:22 am

    Sandra, thanks! It was fun!