As I work each week to dig out from under my never-ending supply of scraps, I end up making more quilt tops, which then need to be quilted. And of course that means batting! But in the course of cleaning up last month, I pulled out all my batting scraps, and.....
Oh my gosh!!! How did THAT happen? Well, it happened because it's easier to cut off a new piece from the roll than to piece batting scraps together, right? But this is more than ridiculous. Time to make some frankenbatting! So I thought, for those of you who may not have tried this before, it might be time for a short tutorial.
While it's possible and simple to zigzag your batting together, today I'm going to show you how to fuse it together using plain old lightweight fusible interfacing. This is my preferred method because I'm too lazy to get out my zigzag machine!
You'll need two (or more) pieces of batting, the lightest weight fusible interfacing you have on hand or can buy, a rotary cutter, straight edge ruler and an iron.
If your batting pieces look like mine, the edges aren't straight or even! But this is easy to fix.
Lay your two pieces on a cutting board, overlapping the edges.
Lay your straight edge ruler over the overlap, being sure that you have two full thicknesses under your ruler. Cut through both layers.
Now when you separate your pieces, you should have two straight edges and two small slivers to throw away. Even if you are sewing your batting together this is a good first step, to give you straight edges to join.
Now take your interfacing and cut enough 1" wide strips to cover the whole cut line of your batting. This is a great way to use up interfacing scraps, too!
Lay your batting on the ironing surface, being sure that if it has a scrim (a thin layer of polyester that the fiber is punched into) it is facing down away from the heat of the iron. You don't want to melt it onto your hot iron! Butt the straight edges of the batting together, then lay the fusible side of the interfacing strip down over the two edges. Press with a medium-hot iron.
Voila! You now have one piece of batting where there were two! It's flexible, holds together well, and won't give you any problems to quilt through.
You can buy a similar product in rolls specifically made for fusing batting like this, but I had interfacing on hand and decided to see if it would work similarly. Lo and behold, it did - and it was free because I already had lots of pieces left over from my garment sewing days. Fusible interfacing is cheap (99 cents for a yard of 20" wide ultra-featherweight, less than that with a coupon) and you can get 20 yards of batting fusible strips from that!
I hope this helps you all deal with your batting scraps, as it is helping with mine! I'm also sorting mine out by width, and marking each piece with a width measurement so that it is simple to locate pieces that will work for my project. Organization is the key, right?
See you next week (if I don't get buried in scraps!)
Hugs!
Sarah
Ingenious! This tutorial helped a ton! Thank you Sarah!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip. I have bought the special rolls of fusible tape for this, but they can be pricey.
ReplyDeleteWow! That is a mountain of pieces. It must be the season.
ReplyDeleteI made some this past weekend. I love Frankenbatting.....I do the zig zag though-my piecing machine does it too. yea for "found $$$". :-)
I have the rolls of tape and every now and then have to go through my batting to do this too, it is always nice to get a lap size quilt done with batting left over from other quilts
ReplyDeleteI have also purchased and used the roles to 'make' batting from cut offs but never thought of using fusible interfacing. What a great idea! It will allow me to use up more 'stuff' that is just hanging around my sewing room. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great tip! I have a whole pile of batting scraps I could fuse together. Now where did I put the fusible web?
ReplyDeleteI have a question. Cotton batting shrinks. Does the interfacing prevent it from making a very small gap? Sorry, I have to comment as anonymous because I don't know any other way, Nancy
ReplyDeleteI am sure this would save me time to assemble batting scraps to use the fusible. Zig zagging takes a lot of time. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteYup, it's time to use up those scraps! Nice to fuse the that way--you could even do a bunch for lap quilts and fold them for their own pile to be used whenever!
ReplyDeleteGreat tutorial. And a lightbulb moment for me — using interfacing. For some reason I thought it was fusible web. Well duh! I try hard to keep all my batting pieces on a spread sheet. I list what it is (if I know) and size. I also pin a note to each piece with the same info. Easy to find a piece by first looking for it on the spreadsheet and then just finding each tag in the big plastic bin I store the leftovers in. I make a lot of smaller -baby size quilts - so I can frequently find a usable leftover in the bin. But I will be trying your method as it seems so easy.
ReplyDeleteI make a T-shirt quilts, so have a LOT of leftover fusible interfacing. Never thought to use it for this purpose! Just might have to give it a try (instead of my "tried and true" machine feather stitch.)
ReplyDeleteWhat an awesome idea! I bought tons of fusible interfacing (among other things) at a quilter's estate sale several years ago, not sure what I would do with it, and now I know! Thank you for this!
ReplyDeleteFrankenbatting for the win! Right now, I'm using my scraps to make enormous "hot pads" for our church dinners to keep from melting the vinyl tablecloths. We've had wicker trivets, but they're slowly dying and can't be washed. But when this is done, frankenbatting it is.
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome. I usually am lazy and don't bother sewing them together -- just butt them up and baste the layers together LOL
ReplyDeleteThank you for your instruction. I usually zig zag my batting scraps, but this could work better.
ReplyDeleteThank you! No more zig zagging for me.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this tutorial. It is much faster and looks better than zig-zagging. I tend to accumulate a lot of batting scarps too.
ReplyDeleteGreat tutorial! Thanks for sharing your method. I have so many scraps of batting in my sewing closet that it looks like snow drifts have blown in. This will be a big help in shoveling it out.
ReplyDeleteAfter carefully reading your article, I understand what is lining and what is interlining.There are many linings/interfaces here, but I don't know where they are used.
ReplyDelete