When I quilt baby quilts on the standard
longarm, I use Pellon Quilters Choice in the thinnest loft but I prefer to have
some help basting for the sit-down machine and the fusible battings do save time
even though I still pin sparingly. I have never experienced any challenges with
the lightest Pellon Quilter's Choice and it makes a nice light quilt with some
loft for stitch definition.
The 6 inch ruler quilted blocks went well with no
tension issues but the rest was FMQ and a nightmare. The quilt was nearly
finished when I decided to rip out half of it and thought about doing all of the
FMQ but there is an advantage to batting with cotton content. When cotton
batting shrinks, it may pull in on the stitches and bury tiny eyelashes. So
being hopeful, I only took out the worst half of the FMQ.
I knew the problem was
the thread. The tension would just not balance in the batting. I had chosen
smooth and silky Glide so it wouldn't create instant pills by pulling up balls
of cotton batting. The batting has a very rough appearance that indicated it
might beard with less than a very smooth thread. After pulling out the worst of
the FMQ, I switched to 60 wt. Glide for bobbin thread and that was the solution
to getting the tension to balance in the batting.
Between the crinkles and the
shrinkage in the cotton batting, a multitude of tension issues and some wobbles
in the not so good ribbon candy and wishbones were absorbed or disguised and I
am happy to be done with the quilt. Now, hopefully, Project Linus accepts quilts
with a patriotic theme because it's not large enough for Quilts of Valor.
