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Fairfield Batting


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Have any of you ever used this? Today was my first time. I'm working on a really large Civil War BOM quilt and the client gave me polyfil Fairfield Quilter's 80/20. If you tug on it at all to straighten it out, it just stretches and thins. I HATE it:(

I'm going to let her know how bad the batting was when I return the quilt. I'm going to try to stick with Hobbs, Quilters Dream and/or Warm and Natural--I won't be using this stuff again!

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It is amazing how some quilters will be so particular about the quality of fabric they use on quilts and then try to scimp on cheap batting. I have had that happen as well where you pull on the batting and it gets really thin. And some of it just has really thin spots just straight out of the package. I try to discourage my customers from using that kind of stuff.

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Just like with anything else, our customer need to be educated on the quality. Two stories....:)

1. One customer brought me a beautiful quilt top she had made for a friend. It was a queen size - lucky friend. She also provided the batting - it may have been Fairfield, I don't remember. I do know that you could not move it without putting your finger through the batting. When I delivered the quilt, she loved it. Then I gave my little demo on batting. I took the edge of her batting that was hanging off and I told her how difficult it was to use. I held it up and poked my finger right though. Then I held up my Quilter's Dream Batting and showed her the difference, she was amazed.

2. My former boss and customer brought me a top that her mother made in high school - her mother is in her 90's now, and in a nursing home and she thought it would be nice to give it to her mom. She brought me batting and told me it "looked like the batting you use in your quilts" - it was not! She purchased batting from JoAnn's. My machine was a total mess when I finished that quilt - I thought I would never get the lint out. When I delivered the quilt I did my demo. I told her that I hoped the batting would hold together and not bunch up, but I think eventually it will. I showed her the difference. She was also amazed. The next quilt she brought....she used my Quilter's Dream.

You have to educate your customers. Show them the difference. They just don't know. When you think about it, we probably didn't know either when we very first started. But after handling batting for a very short period of time, it doesn't take long to figure out there is a huge difference. Customers take classes to learn to piece, select fabric, do creative things to the top, but usually throw a bad back and batting in to finish it off.

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I too have had customers bring the awful batting that you put your finger through when you Lightly pull on it...this brought an idea to mind that maybe one of the programs we should do at our guild should be from the LA's in our area on batting, how to correctly put on a border, etc... I am thinking this can only be a win win program for everyone...?

Vicki

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Fairfield, isn't one of my fav's either, it stretches, tears, bunches up, and if you don't get enough quilting on it, it will move from where it was to the largest corner of the block and just be a huge lump.

Nope I don't use it unless I have to (when a customer would bring it their first time), and then its quilted really really stiff just to hold it. As Mary Beth said with education I didn't get two from the same customer.

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Hello, I just had to jump in. I am new to long arm quilting and have only been peicing quilts for about 2 years, so I am still a newbie in both areas.

MaryBeth has it the nail on the head, I have never done the border the right way on any of my previous quilts and didn't know crap about batting until reading in this forum. I mean the tons of books I have read all said how to do the borders right......but I never really understood how important it was. The books only put a little paragraph on doing borders correctly, they don't really emphasis how important it is.

And if I would have never bought my long arm and got into this forum, I still would be doing the border the lazy way and buying the cheap batting!!! SO THANK YOU LADIES!!!

EDUCATE US!!!!!! :D

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Originally posted by Primitive1

...this brought an idea to mind that maybe one of the programs we should do at our guild should be from the LA's in our area on batting, how to correctly put on a border, etc... I am thinking this can only be a win win program for everyone...?

Vicki

This is such a great idea--tried to do a short 15 minute "how to prep for the longarm" at my guild and the interest wasn't there. My take is that a room full of 80 or so "mature" women will not listen and they began chatting to the point where I just stopped and said anyone who wanted a hand-out could pick one up from me. *sigh* You can't teach those who don't want to learn....

I have started to be more picky about batting. Many will visit the LQS and pick up QD Request--the cheapest and thinnest of the QD line, thinking they are purchasing a quality batting that is a step up from Fairfield or Warm batting. It says--great for machine quilting on the label so they think it is what they need. INSIDE the package it says--not recommended for longarm quilting!! Extra care/special handling must be used for best results. Arrrrghhh! I now ask them to return the batting for Select, but sometimes they don't have time or don't care, so I struggle with it yet again. But I get better at handling it with each use. Still hate it, though!!

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Originally posted by Bonnie

Fairfield, isn't one of my fav's either, it stretches, tears, bunches up, and if you don't get enough quilting on it, it will move from where it was to the largest corner of the block and just be a huge lump.

That's exactly what happened to me. The quilt has large sampler blocks set on point, so as per usual for me, I was going through each row and SIDing around each large square to stabilize and then I was going to go back and quilt. The batting started to bunch though, so I aborted that idea. This stuff is really crap so I'm going to do what everyone has said and "educate" my client.

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The quilt I finished just before Christmas was fairfield batting and I agree with the fact that you can not straighten it out without putting your finger thru it. I ended up getting a big tuck in the batting and didn't realize it until I was getting ready to advance it, and I made the decision to leave it there. That stuff was so thin (probably from me stretching it to straigten it out) that you couldn't see it, and I couldn't feel it, but on the edge you could see the fold. I just made sure to trim that quilt before it went back to the custmer. :cool:

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Same thing happened to me. The batting is horrid and it ripped everytime I moved it.

I thought it was me.

Now I have the right to refuse inferior batting and I put it in my quilting info.

I only carry and use Quilters Dream or Warm and NAtural.

I explain that they spend all the time and $ to make a perfect top,why not spend the $ for good batting. It works;)

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I had a bad experience with Fairfield polyester batting - it was soooo heavy and I can't imagine sleeping under the quilt I did with it. But the customer wanted me to use it AND I had to splice two pieces together because it wasn't wide enough for the quilt. What a pain. Another bad part was that she brought a very cheap flat sheet (cotton poly blend) yuck for the backing which was barely large enough to cover the back. AND to top it off, the quilt was for a lady who was 102 years old. That thing was so heavy and I hated the backing (sheet), but I did an E2E on it and it looked fine, it was just so incredibly heavy it was probably hot to sleep under. Anyway, I do love the new Fairfield cotton/bamboo batting --- it is a dream. I will never use poly again!

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I HATE Fairfield batting. I had to by a king size batting a few weeks ago for a large quilt. I keep 96 in. wide in stock, but it wasn't big enough. All I could find in the king size package batt was the Fairfield 80/20. When I opened it up, there was a huge whole in the middle. I think it was stretched when folded to package. It's unusable. I ended up putting 2 pieces of the 96 wide Hobbs 80/20 together. I let the customer know and she was perfectly fine with that. I generally never piece batting except on my own quilts or charity quilts.

I'm writing the company and will gladly send it back to them so they can see what it's like. I don't want a replacement because I think the quality stinks. It feels nice to the touch, but it's lousy batting.

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I had a customer bring me a cheap batting, don't know what brand for sure. I took it out of the package and ithad a hole in it right from the package. I called the customer and told her I did not want to use it. She said use my own and now she just always has me use my own batting. You get what you pay for in batting!

P.S. I like Vicki's idea on educating the guild. I might try that sometime. I just got a beautiful quilt to quilt for the guild raffle. It is pieced beautifully and the borders are great, too. Maybe they don't need any instructions. I do think I will add a little lesson on borders to my quilt top preparation sheet that I give to everyone I quilt for. Another idea I had is to put a drawing on their work order sheet that they will get back to show the measurements I got on the quilt top before quilting it. Then, they will know what kind of measurements I was dealing with when I started the quilt!

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.....I might be wrong, but I believe that this specific type of Fairfield batting might say on the package: "for hand quilting" or "not recommended for machine quilting" or... something like that? ??? Check the bag and see what it says.

The reason I say this is because I think there are two types of Fairfield batting (maybe more types???) and one is designed for hand and one is for machine??

Someone gave me a roll of Fairfield for hand and it fell apart, was super fuzzy and lots of lint and in general a PITA to use on the machine...

BUT....I've used the Fairfield for machine quilting and it was very nice. It didn't stretch or pull and had a nice soft loft.

I am curious if you got the wrong type of batting for this application. Let me know, OK???

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A couple of weeks ago I did a quilt with Fairfield and I have to say I have no complaints. It didn't tear, snag, get holes, stretch out of shape or any of those good things. Actually, it behaved very well. When I opened the package there was a note within the folds of the batt stating the plus & minuses that might occur. The one that caused me a momemt of concern had to do with washing the quilt after quilting(don't remember the exact terminology they used now). My daughter bought this batting I believe at Joann's. So, f there is going to be a problem with this batting it will be later after it is used since I didn't wash it to see what would happen. The one I don't like is the one you can't handle at all without getting dimples, stretched out of shape and wonkie. Not sure but is that Hobb's Heirloom? Can't stand the stuff, and my daughter brings it all the time. Again, getting it from Joann's with that 40% off coupon.

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