Experimentation

Today I was about to get started on the next piece in my Milky Way series.  I had been forced ( snicker, snicker) to buy more navy blue fabric, but luckily it was on sale at Fabricland this weekend.  I was surprized at how much more expensive the price of cotton has become, but then remembered that we had been warned to expect about a 40% jump.  Anyway, as I was cutting the fabric, I remembered the problem I had with bearding with the last piece.  I had been going to try using black felt instead of my normal Warm'n'Natural batting, but then thought of trying to use black batting.  Oh Dear, I'll have to go to the LQS--too bad.  Actually driving across town on a Saturday in December, with snow falling makes it less of a pleasure than the trip should be.

Now, I'm fussy about my batting.  I generally stick to the Warm company products, as I've never found anything to match them for the detailed and heavy machine quilting I use.  Fussy enough that I donated an entire bolt of polyester batting to the charity progam of the LQG, when I realized that it would probalby never get used inthis house!  The black batting I found is a Hobbs blend--the same 80/20 blend that I had wanted for the piece.  So far it appears to be behaving exactly as required.  The true test will come when I start the embellishment--which is usually the last step in my work.  Warm Company products do not take well to a lot of hand work--at least not for me.  For those small pieces that are hand quilted or hand embroidered, I use the thinnest polyester batt I can find, sometimes even splitting the batt to make it even thinner.  ( I readily acknowledge that the problem is probably in my arthritic hands, not the quality of the batting.  Old age is a bitch, but Warm products are dense.)  But this all causes problems when I have a larger, machine quilted piece that requires hand embellishment,  as the Milky Way series does.

So a little experimentation is in order.  I'll report my findings.