a discovery

ROFL!!! Oh my dear Miz Polly, you know I cursed my cheap thread for years until I made something with flannel and suddenly realized why I had such horrible "thread" fuzz mucking up my poor little Pfaff. But, some of the fuzz comes from bad thread. I do know this because I use bad thread. It makes fuzz on the needle and above the needle that then travels down the thread and makes a bump that gives my baby heartburn. I think using "good" thread makes less fuzz. But if you're using a fabric that "donates" a lot, then fuzz is just an ongoing problem. The worst for me is sewing with fleece. I have to clean out my bobbin area every hour or so. And I do use a lot of fleece for baby quilt backing.

Hugs and a good lint brush, Sunny

Good lint brush? Ha. I need goggles, a mask and the vacuum attachment for tiny spaces. Never mind. We'll get through this one . . . but ! when you use fleece for a backing - do you also use a batting or is the fleece a sufficient loft to do for both? A nice fleece might save me a step. Sounds good. Polly

Polly, it depends on the top and the fleece. I just have to do a touch test. I put a piece of fleece on the top, roughly pen around a few spots so it stays together, and then I feel it. If the seams are too hard through the fleece, I use a batting. But only a very thin one. Some fleece is thick enough to hold up and that's all I use. The weight is great, the quilt is really snuggly and cuddly and wraps around very nicely.

My first "quilt" which was made a good three years before I started to be interested in making good quilts, was for my son who is cold all the time (he's 6'3" and weighs 145 lbs). I used two layers of fleece and just sewed in squares all over to keep the layers together. That is the warmest quilt on earth and will probably still be in existence when some archeologist digs up our long disappeared culture eons from now. He's slept under it every night for ... I think 6 years ... and typically if he's going to be watching a movie he pulls the quilt down and wraps up in it. It gets lots of use. There is no way to put nice points or fussy seam meetings on fleece (at least not for sane people). But it is possible to make simple blocks and so have it be a "real" quilt top all of fleece. I've done it several times and when I take those into the donation offices, the folks always ooooh and ahhhhh over them. It's not easy, but it's worth it sometimes.

Okay, sorry for the treatise on fleece, LOL. I don't even know if I answered your question. But I would definitely back with fleece. It doesn't need close quilting (I have a friend who just ties her fleece backed quilts) and it likes to stick together, so the layers don't move too much once you introduce them to each other. I use it all the time. Buy in big quantities when it's on a good sale at Joann's.

Sunny contemplating my own fleece "blankie"

I used fleece for backings on two "tv" quilts that I made for home. They are wonderful and snuggly and are more likely to be wrapped around someone on the couch than sitting neatly folded. FWIW, I didn't use any batting but then I used thick fleece so any more thickness would've been hard to MQ. HTH Allison.

Polly Esther wrote: