Can you believe it? Today is GuitarGirl’s first day of work at her first job! Can you believe I’m the mom of a 16-year-old with a J.O.B.? How can this be? Somehow I remember picking her up from preschool just yesterday. Or was that yesteryear? Where did the time go?

She scooped up the perfect first job, at the Arts & Crafts Center in Heidelberg as a Recreation Assistant, which is basically a retail job. What a cushy first job, huh? And the Army treats these Recreation Assistants pretty well too, with none of that five-something an hour minimum wage stuff. The kid will make almost as much in just two weeks as I do in a month! Just to put that into perspective, she will have to work way more hours than I do to make that money, but thank goodness she can now keep herself in Dior mascara and MAC lipstick.

I had to mark the occasion with pictures, but of course forgot the camera at home, so I had to use the Blackberry (yeah, I bought a Blackberry; more on that later). Above is a picture of her in the car on the way to the A&C, and here she is on the steps ready to go inside.

*sniff, sniff* I’m usually not the terribly emotional type mom about stuff like this, but I am getting a bit teary eyed at the moment. She’s so excited, but nervous too, of course. Well, I’m excited for her, but right now I’m going to go think about something else before I have to go have a good cry over it all.

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I’ve been working with a new (to me) type of batting, Quilter’s Dream Poly Batting. For my current project, I needed something that has virtually no shrinkage, and very low loft. Quilter’s Dream is nearly the only thing on the menu in the way of poly batting at the Heidelberg Arts & Crafts shop, so I had ITMan pick some up for me while he was out one day. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the stuff comes in at least three different weights (or lofts, I suppose), and he brought me the Deluxe loft, and it was so thick I don’t think my scissors could have cut through it without damage! To be honest, I can’t imagine using it for any large quilt project, because it would be horribly heavy!

Back to the store that went, to trade for the Select loft, which is considerably thinner. I decided to try it on a smaller project, to see how it went, but it still felt thick and stiff to me, and I thought that a 60″ square quilt would still weigh a ton even with this lighter weight batting, so I ordered a Request loft version from Virginia Quilter (as an aside, VQ is about average on shipping costs and times, nothing stellar, not super cheap or super quick). The Request loft was so thin I was worried that it was going to feel like the quilt had no batting, but I decided to give it a try anyway.

The machine quilting was going pretty well actually. I’m used to puffy battings like Hobbs Polydown or Tuscany Wool, so this low loft thing is quite a bit of a departure. The Dream Poly feels wonderfully stable, and the quilt top and backing aren’t slipping around as much against the batting as they tend to to with the Polydown or the Tuscany Wool that I usually use. The Dream Poly grips the fabric well, just like a cotton batting would.

Now comes the major issue: The quilting was going well, until I used a lint roller (the tape on a roll kind) to remove some of the cat hair and fuzz from a section of the quilt before I started quilting it. Cat hair on quilts during construction is just a fact of life around here, though I do try to sweep it off with a lint roller as I go so as not to quilt too much of it into the quilt which makes it harder to remove later. Unfortunately, a major portion of the “fuzz” that’s visible on the black parts of the quilt top is not cat hair, but batting fibers that have bearded already, and the quilt has been basted together less than a week, and only handled on the machine bed for quilting.

I’m in a little bit of shock actually. I’ve never had a batting beard this badly, BUT, to be fair, I haven’t made a quilt like this one before. When I’ve done quilts with a large amount black fabrics or a black background, I’ve used black batting, and it was Hobbs 80/20 anyway, so that’s not much of a comparison. When I quilted Butterfly Houses, I used a black backing, and I was concerned about bearding on the back because I knew that using black batting wasn’t going to work because of all the light fabrics on the front of the quilt. I compromised by adding an extra layer of white fabric between the white Polydown batting and the black backing to hopefully cut down on any bearding potential, and it seems to have worked (though that quilt has never been washed…)

This current quilt project has solid black fabrics and nearly solid white fabrics on the front, with a light grey backing fabric. I didn’t figure it would be a good idea to use black batting, since it would probably show a bit under the white fabrics on the front, but I’m not sure what the best answer would have been at this point. Maybe the black fabric was too loosely woven or something, but it’s not like it looks that way upon close inspection or anything, and for all I know it’s the same on all the other fabrics in the quilt, it just doesn’t show as much because they’re not black. I’m too far along in the quilting to rip it all out and start over with a different type of batting, and I don’t know what I would use anyway. I think I’m stuck with this now, but I hope it doesn’t get really bad after it’s been washed, since the quilt does have to be washed at least once to get the markings out. Meh.

So, after the cat has run out the door already and it’s too late to close it, anybody have any suggestions for a low loft poly batting that doesn’t shrink and doesn’t beard, or am I asking for the moon?? What have your experiences been with Quilter’s Dream Poly?

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Aside from the fact that fabric has no fat, and it’s safe to consume as much as you want without thought for what it will do to hips and thighs, there’s another, even stronger connection between fabric and low-fat/no-fat foods. To some people in our house, if a food says it’s low-fat, it just means that you can safely consume at least twice as many. ITMan proves this frequently with Reduced Fat Oreos, Ruffles and Fig Newtons.

So what’s the fabric connection? Just this: I’ve been meaning to relate my trip to the Arts & Crafts to get more fabric for the 14 Year Quilt Plan. I’d purchased a couple of yards of this beautiful floral print, hoping it would go with the border print that I already had:

It does work quite well, all things considered. I headed back over there, planning to buy at least 5 yards of the fabric, since I want the border to be wider on the quilt and I don’t exactly know how much I’ll need; when I got to the shop, there were six shelves of fabric bolts on sale for 50% off! So I bought the rest of the bolt, which was 10 yards, so now I have a total of 12 yards of this floral print!

When I started to tell ITMan about my luck with the exact fabric I wanted being half price, he rolled his eyes, and said “I suppose you bought the entire bolt, right?” I said of course I did, the same way he makes an entire box of Reduced Fat Oreos disappear in one sitting. He knew he was beaten and had nothing more to say about that one.

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