Polyester Batt is Bad?

There has been a continuing debate among quilters about using polyester batting and thread.  The argument has been that polyester will wear away at cotton fibers and therefore the quilt will not last as long.  I wasn’t sure where I stood on this question until today.  I was asked to evaluate a ca 1970 quilt and suggest how to preserve it.  It was pretty typical of that era in that it was filled with poly batt.  It was quite worn.  About 50% of the hand quilting was worn away and there were numerous splits and tears in the fabrics.  What I noticed was that the wear pattern on the fabrics was similar  to the splitting that one sees in the silk crazy quilts of the late 1800’s.  This is not the same wear pattern that I have observed in very worn quilts of the 1930’s.  My conclusion is that the polyester batt has worn away most of the quilting stitches and thinned out the cotton fabric.  I am convinced that a cotton batt is better for the long term survival of the quilt.

Touching the past

If you have touched a vintage quilt you have touched the past.  What can that quilt tell you about the maker and her cultural milleu?   Unlike standard histories that tell us about rulers and wars, quilts put us in touch with the lives of the little people.  Although the stories they reveal may be mundane, they are always full of fascination.  In the same way that gossip is the language of personal life, so too quilts speak of the intimacies of daily life.  They speak of sleeping and waking, of household routines, and family.amily. 

Maybe the most recognizable quilt pattern of all time is the double wedding ring.  Made by the thousands in the 1920’s and 30’s these quilts with there intertwined loops of multihued prints seem to cover us with a layer of serenity.  Examine the millions of tiny stitches, usually done by hand, and you might wonder at the endless patience that it must have taken.  Look at the individual pieces cut from dozens and sometimes hundreds of different fabrics.  And yet this serenity and this abundance of textiles is in sharp contrast to the scarcity of the economic times.  It is a tribute to the creative spirit of the makers that such comforting coverlets came from such dismal times.