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How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting

Do you have a tub full of quilt batting scraps waiting for you to find a use for them?

Every quilter I know has a container full of batting strips from when they square up their quilts after quilting before attaching the binding.

I’m no exception!

We all just hate to throw out that much batting, don’t we?

After all… it could be put to good use in other projects. But then those containers get fuller and fuller the more quilts we make.

Well… I’ve found the perfect use for all those leftover batting scraps. I’ve been using them to make Charm Square Soup Bowl Cozies. More specifically… Christmas Charm Square Soup Bowl Cozies.

But in order to use them, those strips have to be joined. For those of you who may not have done this before, I put together this quick tutorial.

First, get out all your strips of batting.

Edited to note: I don’t use my soup bowl cozies in the microwave. In fact, I rarely ever use a microwave.

But as I stated in my Charm Square Soup Bowl Cozy Tutorial… if you intend to use your soup bowl cozies in the microwave, make sure that when making the them you only use 100% cotton fabric, batting and thread.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 1 Pile of batting strips being sorted

When I began this project I was just pulling strips from the tub I keep them in but after making a few 9 ½” X 9 ½” squares of batting, I got smart and sorted them into piles by size and length.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 2 Batting strips sorted into white and natural

That made it so much easier to find strips of batting about the same length to join together!

Now you may be the type of quilter who has strips of batting that are the same width for the entire strip. I am not. So I had to trim them.

First, square up one end of the batting strip.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 3 Square off one end of the batting strip

Then cut it to length.

If you’re making batting pieces for the Charm Square Soup Bowl Cozies, the cut will be 9½”.

If you’re using the joined pieces for a different project, cut them to the size needed.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 4 Trim batting strip to 9 and a half inches

Next, square up one of the long edges of the strip of batting.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 5 Trim off one long side of the 9 and a half inch strip

Flip the strip over and square up the last side.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 6 Trim the other long edge of the 9 and a half inch strip

Continue to square up strips in this way until you have enough that when laid side by side they’re just a little over 9½”. I usually shoot for about 10″.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 7 Line up strips to have a little more than 9 and a half inches

Set your sewing machine to a long, wide zigzag stitch.

Hold the strips of batting against each other and sew them together.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 8a - Attach the strips to each other using a large zigzag stitch

There’s no need to pin the strips together… just guide the strips through your machine with them butted up against each other.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 8b - Attach the strips to each other using a large zigzag stitch

Once all the strips are joined together. Take the piece to the cutting mat and square it up to 9½” square.

Continue to cut, join and square up until you have the number of pieces of batting you need.

Note: I had a bunch of shorter pieces of batting scraps that I wanted to get used up but when I ran out of shorter strips, I started joining the longer ones.

For those, I just trimmed the long edges even before joining them.


How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 9 Attach long strips of batting using zigzag stitch

And then I squared them up after they’d been sewn together.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 10 Square up the joined strips to 9 and one half inches square

The stack of batting squares below got a lot taller before I had enough squares to make all the soup bowl cozies that I had made 4 patches for.

How to Join Leftover Strips of Quilt Batting - 11 Several 9 and a half inch squares of batting joined

Each cozy uses 2 pieces of batting and I had sewn 36 four patches to make 18 soup bowl cozies.

Charm Square Soup Bowl Cozies really are a great way to use up a lot of strips of batting. By the time, I was done making batting squares I had used up all of my natural colored quilt batting and had started digging into the pile of white strips.

 

 

 

 

Another great use for these joined batting squares would be for making Quilt-as-You-Go strip quilt blocks like I did for the quilt blocks I made to send to Jan Mac at Oz Comfort Quilts back in June 2011 to make quilts to give to victims of natural disasters in Australia.

 

 

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How to Join Batting Strips to Reuse in Other Projects

 

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9 Comments

  • Rose Gibson
    April 2, 2021 7:24 pm

    Thanks. Am ready to join batting strips to enlarge for a quilt.

  • Linda
    November 30, 2017 8:23 pm

    Anything used in the microwave should be all cotton, ya know. Thread, fabric, and batting with no polyester avoid fire. Beware, folks!
    \

    • Super Mom No Cape
      November 30, 2017 8:41 pm

      Hello Linda,

      I do not use my soup bowl cozies in the microwave. They are only used as insulation between a hot (or cold) bowl of food and whatever surface they are being set on.

      I do state very clearly in the Charm Square Soup Bowl Tutorial that if a person intends to use them in the microwave to use only 100% cotton for all materials.

  • Jocelyn Thurston
    November 30, 2017 2:54 pm

    I always keep my batting remnants so thanks for this excellent way of joining to reuse.

    • Super Mom No Cape
      November 30, 2017 9:01 pm

      So glad my tutorial will be helpful, Jocelyn.

  • Rachel
    November 30, 2017 12:48 pm

    What a very good idea!

    • Super Mom No Cape
      November 30, 2017 8:47 pm

      Thanks Rachel!

  • mary
    November 29, 2017 7:44 pm

    It’s a great way to use up all of those bits of leftover batting.

    • Super Mom No Cape
      November 30, 2017 9:18 pm

      It was sooo good to start putting them to use, Mary.

Comments are closed.