80/20 Cotton-Polyester Batting Explained: Low Loft, Scrim Support, and Room to Quilt Wide
An 80/20 batting blends the two fibers quilters reach for most: mostly cotton, with a smaller share of polyester. Pellon® 80/20 Cotton/Polyester Batting With Scrim, in the 90" x 108" Queen Size Package in Natural, gives you that blend in a needle-punched batting built for strength and stability — a practical, everyday choice for a queen-size quilt that will be used and washed, not just displayed.
What This Batting Is
As the name states, the blend is 80/20 cotton/polyester. The batting is needle punched with a soft scrim. Scrim is a lightweight stabilizing layer worked into the batting, and needle punching locks the fibers through it. Pellon describes that scrim as lending strength and stability without bunching or bearding — bunching is when batting shifts and clumps inside a finished quilt, and bearding is when fibers work their way through the fabric to the surface. The scrim helps the batting hold together as one even layer while you baste, quilt, and wash it.
At 90" x 108", this is a queen size package, sized to give a queen quilt top its middle layer with room to spare around the edges for basting and quilting. The color is Natural, the warm, unbleached tone that sits comfortably under most medium and darker fabrics, as well as under natural and cream-toned tops.
Loft and Shrinkage: What to Expect
The loft is 1/16 of an inch. Loft is simply batting thickness, and 1/16 inch is low loft: flat, light, and easy to feed under a domestic sewing machine or on a longarm. Low loft lets your quilting stitches sit crisp and defined rather than puffy, and the finished quilt drapes and folds without much bulk — a good fit for bed quilts that need to lie smoothly and go through the wash regularly.
Shrinkage is 3–5%. That contraction happens on the first wash and often produces the soft, lightly crinkled texture many quilters love in a cotton-rich batting. Plan for it: if you want your finished quilt to stay as close as possible to its planned dimensions, allow for that small percentage when you size your top and backing.
Quilting Distance: Up to 10 Inches Apart
The recommended maximum stitch distance is 10 inches apart. In other words, your quilting lines or motifs can be spaced as far as 10 inches from each other and still hold this batting properly. That generous spacing is a direct benefit of the scrim-supported, needle-punched construction. It gives you real design freedom: a wide grid, widely spaced straight lines, large-scale motifs, or hand quilting with room between rows all stay within the batting's limits. Quilt more closely whenever you like — 10 inches is the maximum, not a target.
How to Use It
Build your quilt sandwich in the usual order: backing wrong side up, batting in the middle, and quilt top right side up. Smooth the batting flat, let any package fold lines relax, and baste securely with pins, spray, or thread before you start. Keep your quilting within that 10-inch maximum spacing, then trim the excess batting and backing even with the top before binding.
A few tips for the best result. Test your quilting plan on a small practice sandwich first if you are new to low-loft batting, so you can see how flat the stitches will look. Choose Natural under fabrics where a warm undertone will not show through; under very thin white fabrics, check a layered sample in good light before committing. And measure before and after the first wash if finished size matters, so the 3–5% shrinkage never surprises you.
Care
Finished projects made with this batting are washable by hand or machine and are also dry cleanable. Wash according to your quilt's fabrics, expect that gentle first-wash shrinkage, and enjoy a queen quilt whose middle layer was built — scrim and all — to stay smooth, stable, and beard-free over time.
Shop the Pellon® 80/20 Cotton/Polyester Batting With Scrim 90" x 108" Queen Size Package. Color: Natural. at Linda's Electric Quilters.
