lindaschipper

Are your machines low shank? I have an extra walking foot I could send you if that is what your machine takes.

junegerbracht

I found the Pellon batting awful to work with - sheds all over and stretches. Perhaps some of the non sewers could fund raise for the supplies. I make charity guilts for my guild and always want to give something that I would be happy to give too a-loved one.

maviskw

Linda and Irish Rose have two very good ideas. Stabilize the the batting layer to one other layer before turning.

Another way to do this quickly, easily and cheaply is with Elmer's School Glue. Make lines of the glue on the batt, place top or back on that, right side up, and iron the glue dry. Then put the other piece on face down, pin just enough to hold the outside in place and sew all around the outside, except for enough to turn the sandwich. Up to 24 inches may be needed. Then birth the quilt (turn it right side out). Now your are ready to tie it.

There are several posts on this board that give precise instructions on using the school glue.

klswift

The way you are doing it is called birthing (turning inside out). May I suggest you 'self bind'. Lay your layers out as you would a 'regular' quilt you are making. Have the backing about 3" bigger than the batting and the front. (I would run a row of stitching around the edge at this point to hold everything, but not absolutely necessary.) Fold the extra backing over twice towards the front to create a binding, then stitch. Fold it in half (1 1/2") then fold onto front for 1 1/2" binding and stitch it down. Then you do not need to topstitch, you have a larger binding to hold and perhaps not pull and stretch and the batting is inside instead of next to feeddogs and being pulled. But, you do not have a separate binding to come loose later on. It can withstand a lot of use. I often use this technique with my very young students on their first quilts - quick, easy and it always works.

Jo Anne B.

I tried an 80/20 just once, thought it was horrible to work with, never again. Realizing your budget concerns I feel for your frustrations.
Maybe a fundraiser(maybe a bake sale at Fellowship after church services?) to enable the group to purchase a roll of W&N when it it goes on sale(JoAnn's Fabric) at the Holidays?? Thinking it's even offered with free shipping. Just an idea...

madamekelly

If I were going to “birth” a quilt, I would glue baste the batting to the backing fabric first to be sure the batting laid flat inside after “birthing”. After gluing, I take my blowdryer and dry it quickly. I have no patience or room to let it air dry.

susiecute

Thanks for the link. all this time i thought we were making them the same was as lwr pattern!! i just joined this group about a 18 months ago and thought they were using that pattern. they are not. hmmm. wonder who came up with this idea? i had laid out a double bed with the pellon batting and took it in tonight and laid it out on the tables. it is a disaster - it is bunched up and wrinkled and will have to be torn out. the consensus tonight was to go back to the warm and natural. we have gone through maybe 4 rolls of the pellon - this one is the worst - wondered if the supplier or something had changed (it came from walmart). someone mentioned goodwill on this thread - we get our sheets from goodwill, salvation army, volunteers of america (last tuesday of the month when everything is half off) as well as estate and garage sales. since we started using sheets - the blankets are much prettier than the willy nilly patterns thrown together.

to date we have received several grants from Thrivent for service projects - but the grants are not big enough to purchase the warm and natural batting.

we shall see how the new batting works. many thanks to everyone for their thoughts and ideas.