Soft And Toasty Batting--A Review

I picked this up last week at the local chain fabric store.  I had a few things I really needed, like sewing machine oil and half price fabric.  Plus they keep sending me coupons.  Weirdly enough, these coupons now have my name printed on them.  This from the people who used to try to make me sign up for their flyers every time I went there, or they wouldn't send them.

Anyway, I also needed batting, and it was all half price.  I usually buy Warm and Natural, but they were out of the queen size, so I took a chance on this.  I had never seen it before, but it's 100% cotton, which is what I like.  I'm sort of a cotton purist--cotton fabric, cotton thread, cotton batting.  Or wool.  I'm not a fan of polyester, although I do use it on occasion.

There were several things I liked about this batting from the start.  It's packaged in a 5 yard bolt, 45 inches wide.  This is a great size for my charity quilts.  It's made by Fairfield, a reputable company.  And it's made in America.  If I could buy everything made in America, I would be happier.

 Here's what it looks like on the back of the bolt.  The regular price is $39.99 for 5 yards of batting 45 in. wide.  If I could get 5 small quilts out of it, it would cost $8.00 per quilt.  But at half price, it's only $4.00 per quilt.  However, I'll probably only get enough for 4 quilts, so it will cost $5.00 per quilt.  Not too bad.

 Here's another cool thing.  The package has a quilt pattern printed on it, just like the old Mountain Mist batting wrappers.  It did get a little torn in the store, as you can see.  When I took the label off, there was a better copy of the pattern on the inside of the label.  It's a pretty simple pattern, but the directions seem to be done well.

 Here's what it looks like on the bolt.  There is a very thin layer of scrim, which I'm sure you can't see in this picture.  The label says you can stitch up to 10 in. apart.  I would never do that, of course, but it's nice to be able to quilt a 4 in. grid without worrying about the batting shifting.
Now for the test!  The guinea pig was a charity quilt top from last year that I hadn't gotten around to quilting yet.  I spray basted it to the batting, and quilted a 2 in. grid.  I could have done less quilting, but I wanted to see how the batting would look.  It was easy to machine quilt, just like any other cotton batting.  I quilted it on the Davis Vertical Feed circa 1920.
These pictures were taken after it was washed.  I washed it in cold water, on the hand wash cycle, and dried it in the dryer.  You can see how it shrunk up a little, next to the lines of stitching. (I like that look!)

 From the front.

 Close up.

On the back.

It turned out just slightly puffier than the Warm and Natural.   It's easier to see the puffiness in the border.

In these pictures, I put the guinea pig quilt next to one I did with Warm and Natural for a comparison.

Some of the puffiness might be due to the closer quilting, but mostly I just think it's a denser batting.

Overall, I like it, so far.  I'm going to keep testing with the rest of the bolt.

I had never seen this batting before, but for all I know it may have been around for a while.  Have you used it?  What do you think?