Quilt Makers, can you talk to me about fabric please?

[LRDTheFeministNutcase]

Hi,

I'm very new to this but I've just started making a quilt for my baby niece and I'm really enjoying it. The fabric I've used is plain cotton - a little from a fabric shop near me and some from online (it's Dan Bennett, if you're familiar - really pretty patterns imo). Problem is, even when I have washed the starch out, it doesn't have a very soft texture. If I'm looking online (seems best, shops round here are rubbish!), how do I find nice soft fabric I can quilt with?

Thanks!

You can't reallu, unless it is old material.
I have made a lot of quilts and the nicest are made with scraps of old materials from teatowels, pillowcases, blouses and even boxer shorts.
Means the quilt tells a story too.

Teatowels?

I'm not sure we're on the same page here. Teatowels are really rough and scratchy - do you mean the things you dry dishes with or is this somethign else?

I was meaning is there anything other than cotton that'd be softer - I've heard of people turning their wedding dresses into quilts back in the day, I guess that would have been silk but would that need you to be very skilled to sew?

I do love the idea of the quilt telling a story though.

Teatowels are those things about 3 mm thick, no?

Haha!
Towels to dry dishes.
I found some very old soft ones in a charity shop once. Cream with thick green and pink stripes throguh them.
Perfect.
My 10 year old is under the quilt I madeo ut of them when I was pregant with her, as i TYPE.

Oh, I see ... sounds like a beautiful colour combination.

I was thinking of my rather less elegant ones, which I think originally came from Sainsburys!

I did have a scout round the Charity shops here (I was thinking old men's shirts might be nice), but no joy.

I keep everything which has a pattern I like.Might not come in usefu lfor years but it gets stored and bides its time.

Have fun.
Quilting and patchworking os so soothing and productive.

It is fun, isn't it!

I think I'm going to order some heavy silk in a small quantity and see what I make of it - and as you say, I can always keep it for something else.

People use flannel to make quilts with if you want instant softness. I prefer washing the finished quilt a few times to give it that battered feel.

Ah ... if the repeated washing works, I will try that! Thanks moomin.

The softness of the quilting fabric varies a lot depending on base material: some is very stiff and some is silky smooth soft. If you don't mind cost you could always buy Liberty cotton, it's fab. :)

I do patchwork and quilting with cotton fabric and I often find myself thinking it's not very soft while I'm doing the patchwork - but once you add the wadding and start quilting, it is transformed into the loveliest (and most addictive) touchy-feely end product. Stick with it, honestly.

Invader, I had thought about Liberty, but a while ago I bough some scraps on Ebay and they were pretty stiff - do you think it was fake? (The thought did occur).

Grover - thanks for encouraging me! I'm really enjoying it so I am glad to know it should work out.

Liberty makes different weights of fabric, maybe you ended up with decorator fabric? What you want is Tana Lawn.

I have extensive bookmarks of various online quilting shops which I will post sometime when I'm not on my phone and DD lets me!

It was meant to be Tana Lawn - to be honest I don't think the seller knew what they were talking about, but I'm not all that expert about fabric either.

I h ave been browsing online and there's some nice stuff, but also some fabric that is, frankly, hideous - muddy pinky/purple flowers and crap. So any tips are good!

Sorry to hijack but I'm thinking of using DH's old cotton shirts for a quilt. Do you think this would work?

PH - I will check out, but I think I am probably going to carry on with washing it a lot and hoping (I fell in love with the fabric I bought first off, it's looking really good cut up), but will look for brushed cotton. DH has this endearing belief that I will soon finish the baby's quilt and should make one for us.

open - I bet it'd look lovely - someone I know has done a pattern including a star made of stripes and it looks amazing! My DH is unfortunately attached too his shirts ... including the crappy ones.

Well, DH gets through shirts quite fast and has also put on a bit if weight in the last few years, and has never thrown an item of clothing away, as far as I can remember, so king size it is!

I am sure that by the time toddler DS has babies of his own I will have started finished it.

Lots of really easy and quick quilt patterns out there. The first one I made was for dd. I used a line of fabric from Moda (so quilting cotton) and used a polyester batting - it's beautifully soft now after a few washes.

Good - it sounds as if I didn't need to worry about the softness.

I'm making it with 6-point stars, it's fun.

While I'm asking questions, I should come clean and admit I'm not a mum so am ignorant: what size do you reckon I should make it? My neice will be nearly nine months old by Christmas and that's teh first time I'll get to see her (, I know). Is there such a thing as a standard cot-size? Or if I made just a biggish rectangle, would that be ok?

I crocheted (badly) a cot sized blanket for DS & he still snuggles under it now, age 2.5, and he will be for a bit longer. A small blanket or quilt is nice for littles as they can drag it round the house easily!