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Batting Costs

The cost of materials is kinda like gaining weight.  It all goes up in small increments and you never notice til one day . . you notice!  🙂

This morning Vince found a 60% off coupon for JoAnn’s.  He was so excited til he noticed that it was in store only so . . being the bargain hunter that he is, he decided to look for an online coupon and found a 50% off coupon.  He asked if there was anything I needed.  No!  I don’t need anything!  Are you sure . . it’s 50% off one item?  No, really.  I have enough of everything to last me a very long time. Then he said . . what about batting?  Are you kidding?  For the past 15 years, I so often hear him moaning about how much batting I have around here.  Then I realized he had his credit card out.  Technically, anything to do with quilting or myhobbies, I’m supposed to pay for with my hobby fund but if he had his credit card out, yes, thank you . . I do believe I could use a roll of batting.

I almost had a stroke when he clicked on the Warm & Natural batting.  The regular price is right at $450 for 40 yards. With the 50% off coupon, I got it for $225, which is about what it would have been to buy it wholesale

While we’re not comparing apples to apples, I found a Hobbs invoice from 2001.  Know what I paid for a 30 yard roll of 96″ Hobs Heirloom 80/20 back then?  $88.50.  That was wholesale and it was for 30 yards where the Warm & Natural has always been a little more and it’s put up on a 40 yard roll but that’s still a big difference.

There’s plenty of batting around here and every bit of it was purchased on sale or wholesale when I was quilting for others.

This is the roll I’m currently using.  It’s Mountain Mist Gold, which is 50/50 (cotton/poly).  There’s probably enough left on this roll for three quilts.

Both of these are Warm & Natural.  Since I make mostly QOV or other donation quilts that are in the 60″ x 80″ size range, if I make 20 of those quilts and I cut 70″ off the roll for each quilt, that’s 1400 inches and there are 1440 inches on a roll so that leaves about 40″ for any errors in cutting That’s not bad at all for $264, which is what the on sale roll, plus shipping and tax ended up being.  That’s roughly $13/quilt for the batting.

Because the Hobbs rolls are 96″ wide, I usually use them for the larger quilts that I make.

The two rolls shown in the picture probably have enough for 15 quilts on the bottom roll and 18 quilts on the top roll.

On top of two food storage shelves are more rolls of batting.

The roll on the far away end is Hobbs Heirloom bleached.  The roll on the closest end is Warm & White.  It’s never been opened so there’s enough for 20 quilts on that one and probably 10 quilts on the other roll.

In the quilt storage area is a full never opened roll of Hobbs Heirloom 80/20.

Over by the buckets of food is another unopened roll of Hobbs Heirloom 80/20.  Those are 96″ x 30 yards so I figure I can get 15 QOV size quilts or 12 lager quilts from each of those rolls.

In another corner of a closet are three partial rolls of Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 and Warm & Natural and I figure there’s enough for about 15 quilts total from those three rolls.  With another roll of Warm & Natural coming, I figure I have on hand enough batting for about 130 quilts, plus there’s probably 20 packages of batting around here.

Unless Vince is offering to pull out his credit card for more batting, I don’t think I’ll be needing any for a very long time.  A very, very long time.

When we moved from Kentucky, Vince was kinda fussing at the movers because they had assured us they could get everything on one truck and at the last minute, they could not.  The driver looked at Vince and looked at me and snapped “If SHE didn’t have 31 rolls of batting, we could have made it with one truck!”   It’s always nice to get the blame for whatever goes wrong!  🙂

Now . . if you’ll excuse me . . I have batting to use!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. You will be very warm is needed. I am also happy to know I am not the only one blamed for everything that goes wrong. Enjoy using up the batting and I (we) will enjoy seeing what it has been used on.

  2. I must admit, I’m in shock however while I can’t compete with you, I know I have enough quilt “stuff” to last another whole lifetime of sewing. And I’m happy to enjoy having it. And if I can’t take it with me, someone will enjoy it.

  4. I laughed at the mover’s comment. It was the batting, not the rest of the household goods, Vince’s tools or whatever, just the batting problem, eh? =) That’s a lot of batting. I’ve been amazed that Quilter’s Dream hasn’t gone up since 2011. 30 yards x 93″ of the select I use is $150 for natural and $180 for white. I love that batting! You do seem to have your emergency preparedness supply of batting!

  7. I buy the Kodel polyester batting for my quilting and it went from $59 to $89 overnight. With the 50% off coupon I could get a 50 yard roll for under $40 shipped. I know it is because it is made from the same stuff gasoline is and the price of gas around here is about $4.50. I guess I will just have to do less charity quilting 🙁

  9. Yep, you’d better head right out to the studio and get to sewing. You’ll need a long life to use up all that batting.

    Isn’t it nice that we as women always get the blame when something goes wrong? Just think of all the power we must have and didn’t even know about.

  10. another quilter here who doesn’t have room to store batting.
    while Vince has his card out you might want to check yur supply of sewing machine needles… those things we always forget to stock up on, LOL.

  11. Congrats on your restock! I am as you, I have a monthly budget I can spend as I like and mine is usually spent on quilting. If my DH asked me if I needed anything and offered to pay for it I would be suspicious on what he has bought or feels guilty about. That was my first thought when I read that, “I wonder what he bought?”. LOL. Maybe you should go ask him that, you might can get a new car out of it!

  12. Well, I’ve always said that as long as I have lots and lots of stash and projects, I can’t die! At this rate, I’ll be around for a long long long time yet! ROFL!

  13. Warm and Natural really went up in price. I stopped Friday night to get batting and couldn’t believe how expensive it was.

  14. Can’t turn down a credit card in hand!! Especially with that coupon, he would have been so sad 🙂

    I’m just not sure what I’m more intrigued by….
    all that batting
    how organized everything looks
    or your food storage!

    I’m really going to try to cook more and start working on storage supplies once we get moved. Of course I kinda said that when we moved into this house hehe. But in my defense my stove only has 2 burners and we didn’t want to buy a new one because we were going to do a remodel here. Then we found the new house…… Now there is no time for anything between the 2 houses and running a business. But you are always in the back of my mind as inspiration!

  15. You have way more storage space than I do!! I keep a roll or two of Hobbs 80/20 that I pay about $95 for plus shipping and then I use a coupon at Joann’s for some warm and white for those quilts I need a white batting. I can’t store more than 3 rolls. Luckily I don’t need any 120 inch batting anymore since downsizing my machine because there’s nowhere to put it

  16. Hanks! I had a really good chuckle over your ” problems”. You sure do have a lot of quilting in front of you !!

  19. Because it is *totally* the job of the mover to decide how much batting you should have! I’ve got a half roll or so of Warm and Natural and about twenty yards of polyester from the local Mennonite store ($75 or so for a thirty yard roll from them — makes me glad I like polyester for most things!) and have been debating whether I should watch the black Friday sales for a deal on ‘Warm and Natural. You’ve made up my mind for me. I need it.

  20. Jo-Ann’s had a one day roll batting sale one day during the holiday season – I think it was a $279 dollar roll for $99. I was in the parking lot 15 minutes before they opened and the first one to grab a roll! Deals are out there now and then, just need to keep an eye out there for them 🙂

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