Minky, A Love Affair
Minky is the relatively new super soft, super fluffy fabric that is the hit of the decade. Along with it, is minky’s newer slightly lesser loft printed cousin, cuddle fabric, or quilter’s cuddle fabric. Everyone wants it, everyone is in love with it. Baby quilts, lap quilts, ALL the gifts.
A few fun facts about minky and its cousin. All of these are 100% polyester. Synthetics are not very breathable and may not be ideal for sleeping under. Also, if you have not prewashed your quilting cottons for the top, your top may shrink with washing, but your minky or cuddle backing will not.
The second is what leads many longarmers to not allow it to be used for backing, it stretches. A LOT! Couple that with my last fun fact, that any cut edge sheds like a double-coated dog in summer and longarmers do tend to take a long steadying breath as it walks in the door.
I have a wonderful customer who has allowed me to use pictures of her quilting project to illustrate some of these things. Let me preface this with the fact that she is an amazing, incredibly precise piecer who brings me the flattest quilts ever and this is by no means a criticism of her work. She is masterful and this was her first foray with cuddle fabric. We all learned. LOL.
Stretch One direction stretches more than the other. For that reason, backings must be loaded with the maximum stretch going horizontally (left to right). Top to bottom is loaded more taught. With that amount of stretch, the backing would snap back like a rubber band causing a mess on the backside if the stretch went top to bottom.
Piecing If two pieces need to be pieced together to get the size required, it must be only one seam and that seam must run horizontally. You may have seen the horizontal seam requirement from other longarmers. The reason for this is what I call the butterfly effect. When there is a seam, it does not stretch. Fabric innately has a little bit of give due to the weave of the fabric. When the seam is horizontal, as it is loaded on the machine, there is little to no need for it to give with the fabric, it is managed as the quilt is advanced. A vertical seam holds tightly and if the outer edges are fuller (thus the wings), it either needs to be resquared - which I will always try to do first, or it needs to be taken apart to be repieced without the fullness. In the case of minky or cuddle fabric, a vertical seam will not give at all and the rest will stretch quite a bit even though it is not the most stretchy direction.
My customer’s quilt back (cuddle fabric), was phenomenally pieced. But, alas, the highest stretch direction was perpendicular to her seam. Decisions had to be made. The stretch was the most important consideration; it needed to go left to right. The seam then ran vertically. I made three attempts to load it flat, but the fact that the seam was off center and the fullness was an additional 3” on either side, I had to make the decision to see if I could bring it into square.
Seams Make them wide (1”) and have them lie open. Three layers of minky plus quilt top will not fit under my hopping foot. You can see my customer used pinking shears, also a great idea.
Batting I will use batting on these quilts. Period. The pile can pull through needle holes and I’ve not seen anyone having success with fixing that yet. (Can you guess what color the minky is in each of these pictures? The one on the right has batting, but it was too thin.)
Dust Bunnies Some people have dust bunnies, I have dust elephants. Minky creates dust dinosaurs. I tried to use a rotary cutter and mat, you can see from the picture how that is a mess. This backing was big enough, I opted to square it on the floor. Tape measure, scissors, and slow careful cutting. You can even see how the circles lined up perfectly when I marked the correct length. And, those dust monsters and the excess lint can find surprising ways to trip up my machine, either immediately or several quilts down the road. It takes extra time to prevent that from happening.
See how the dot pattern repeats perfectly? I challenge anyone to find her seam in the finished quilt. The ivory minky shows what a mess it is to my tools. And, my dust dinosaurs.
Cuddle Fabric Surprise Please be aware that cuddle fabric is typically printed from the top and that the dye does not penetrate all the way to the base, unlike minky that is dyed all the way through. When minky is longarmed, the pile of the fabric gets pushed in different directions with the pattern and gets stitched down. Often a good shake or washing will open a lot of that up and the quilting stitches will settle into the pile. For cuddle fabric, since it is not dyed all the way through, as it is pushed over, the stitches may stitch in such a way that the white undyed pile shows. Don’t be alarmed, a good shake, a wash, and it should even out as well.
I will take minky backings up to a certain size. There are, however, additional charges for quilting and for squaring it, if needed. These charges are necessary due to the additional time needed to get these backings loaded and the time needed to clean the excessive lint off my machine and out of my studio. For trimming, there is the extra time cleaning, but, also, these fabrics are hard on my blades and mats, as you may discover. If you would like to bring in a minky or cuddle backing, ask for my prep sheet and it will give you all the requirements you might need.
A final note, bless you all who piece and bind on minky or cuddle fabric. I pieced one backing and I have squared a few others and it is slick, unkind stuff to work with…its not so soft side?
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