Quilt batting matters

Quilt batting for non quilters is the material sandwhiched between the top and back of your quilt. My great grandmother had to "card" cotton and clean it to use it in a quilt. It was painful on the fingers, time consuming, and produced a lumpy but warm quilt. Fast forward to the creation of polyester.  Quilts were often made with polyester batting when polyester batting was first introduced on the market.  I used polyester batting in the quilts I made in the 70's and 80's.
Initially they were beautiful quilts. However, over time they were not so beautiful after some wear and age.The older polyester was a harder and not so soft polyester. It contributed a nice appearance to a finished quilt but the polyester starts to "strand" through the cotton fabric and the once beautiful quilt now looks like it's shedding from the inside out. Pieces of polyester fiber work their way through the fabric to the surface of the quilt. After this experience I never used polyester batting again. I recently came across some information that polyester batting has greatly improved since I last used it.

While reading one of my quilt reference books I found  a rating list of battings which included polyester, cotton, wool, and silk battings.
The ratings were for warmth, shrinkage, longevity, quilting ease, and price.
I wasn't surprised by the longefity of cotton quilts vs. polyester, but I was surprised that polyester has been improved up. The new polyester batting is
"supposed" to be  finer, softer, and easier to work with than the polyester batting of the past. I say "supposed" because I have not recently used a polyester batting. I plan to make a lap quilt that I will not have a lot of time invested in and use one of the new and improved polyester battings. I will post the results of my findings in a few months.