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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Yesterday wasn’t one of the best workdays for me in recent memory. Most of the time, I’m lucky enough that my job is essentially a hobby that I get paid for, but yesterday wasn’t the norm. One of my clients was in assault mode, and inundated me with 20 emails over the course of about 2½ hours, all of them containing requests for updates to their site or questions that needed to be answered now. Then they wanted to know why something they sent me last week wasn’t done, and I snapped a little, and told them it wasn’t done because I’d spent 20+ hours on the weekend working on their new site design and online shop programming, so that all that would all be ready for Monday’s telephone meeting, and since Monday, I’d been working on still other things for them. Sheesh.

By 11-ish, I was done with the day, but unfortunately, it wasn’t done with me. There were still all those updates to do, in addition to the thing from last week that wasn’t done yet. I started in on a fillable Adobe PDF form for the site, and spent more than three hours attempting to figure out how to make the boxes expand with the text. Oh puh-lease. Adobe Acrobat hasn’t ever been exactly user friendly; I mean, come on, how is it obvious that to make a PDF file, you “distill” it with the Distiller?!? Sure, that was version 5, but it’s still not much better in version 8.whatever that I have now, especially when you want to do something weird like “dynamic forms.” Add the LiveCycle forms creator program into the mix and it’s surely a recipe for stress.

I finally threw in the towel at 3:40 p.m. I thought I could see the way forward, but I was hot, tired, grouchy, I’d yelled at the kids when they started the screaming-meme stuff in the kitchen and told them to go outside, and I was just DONE. The way forward could wait for a bit. I grabbed a quilt, and sat down at the machine to try some sorely needed quilt therapy. I didn’t even have to think too hard about the task, since it was basic machine quilting that I’d already planned out, so it was pretty mindless.

Within about 15 minutes, I was calm, cool and collected. I spent the time until the dinner hour in a state of quilting bliss, happily creating. I was even relaxed enough to try something new; I removed the Bernina Stitch Regulator from the box for the first time since I bought the machine and used it for some straight line quilting. I’d tried the BSR at the workshop in Paducah with Diane Gaudynski when I borrowed a 440 machine to use, and wasn’t all that impressed, so I’d never tried to get to know my own after I bought the Bernina. I’ll share my thoughts about the BSR in a later post, but for what I was doing yesterday afternoon, I was pretty happy with the BSR, though we still have a ways to go before we are one, if that day ever comes.

The rest of the day was great, and I quilted more after dinner and late into the wee hours of this morning. I did try to keep the frustrations of the day out of my head, but even when I was thinking about them, I could be calm about it. Quilting does that for me most of the time, and today, it was like a thundershower in a desert.

And today? Well, the work is still there, and Adobe is still my nemesis. I hacked away at it again this morning, and finally gave up. Normally, I’m not a “give up” type of person; I tend toward the “me against it” mentality, and I keep searching for the answer until I find it, so that I can win. With this one though, I’ve looked, I’ve searched, I’ve hacked away at it for hours, and I’ve finally decided that it must take someone much smarter than me to figure it out. Never mind. I don’t want to win anymore, I just want it to go away.

I’m going to quit on this one so that I don’t get to the point today where I need a tranqulizer quilt therapy. Never let it be said that I don’t know when I’m beaten. I’m off to do some of the other updates that don’t involve fighting with Adobe, but there will be more quilting thundershowers later today, whether I need them or not!

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Paisley Pavane traveled to Pennsylvania for the Quilt Odyssey show a couple of weeks ago. I almost forgot entirely that it was there, partly because of the moving confusion still hanging around on some things, and partly because I didn’t actually pack up the quilt and send it there myself; the nice folks at the NQA show sent it on to Quilt Odyssey after the show in Columbus.

Since I’d kind of put it out of my mind for a bit, I was surprised to hear that the quilt was awarded the Husqvarna-Viking Award for Best Machine Quilting! Wow! How cool! Now I’m feeling that fever, that inner prompting to work on a show quilt. I have one partly done, as you may remember, but it’s The Misery Quilt. I may not be feeling quite enough of the fever to tackle THAT right now, and I have some other things on my plate that need to take precedence anyway. Eh, I think I’ll just enjoy the little boost, and hope that Paisley Pavane makes it into the AQS Show in Des Moines, especially since I’ll be there to see it in the show!

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