quiltedsunshine

When I think of a soft, cuddly quilt, I think of a tied, puffy quilt with high loft, polyester batting.

Annaquilts

Yes, this! Also using and washing it will soften it but there is nothing like a hand quilted quilt.

joe'smom

Machine quilting has top and bottom thread interlocking for each stitch, hand quilting has either a top or bottom thread for each stitch, so the feel of hand quilting is just softer. Dense machine quilting is going to feel stiffer than dense hand quilting.

givio

I don't think that close quilting necessarily makes a stiff quilt with poor drape. I bought a Mountain Mist cotton batting at a garage sale. It was veeery old. The original price sticker was a couple of dollars. The instructions on the bag said to quilt in lines 1/4" apart. Close quilting is needed for a plain cotton batting, which doesn't have a scrim layer on it which is often what's used now to keep batting from falling apart. As others have said, if you don't quilt close with such a product, you will have 'migration' and a lumpy quilt. Since this type of old batting is exactly the plain cotton like what my grandma used, and the close quilting still made a soft quilt with nice drape, I'd guess her hand quilting played a part in how her quilts felt.

I know she used new fabric-- scraps from clothing she made-- so I don't think using old clothing was what made her quilts soft. However, her new fabric was not like our modern LQS fabric. If you have bought vintage fabric, you will notice it is thinner, a lighter weight, woven with a finer thread, and often fewer threads per inch making a looser weave.

On the other hand, I have a quilt I made with good quality modern LQS fabric, which I purchased LA quilting for, asking particularly for a free motion quilting design that I created, that was moderately dense in some areas to very dense in others. It has a wool batting. After the first wash, I found it was very flexible, soft, and had a great drape that I was pleased with. ...So, go figure! lol

Prism99

Just want to mention that dense machine quilting with polyester thread does not seem to affect softness and drape at all, in my experience. This seems to be true even when the polyester thread is not fine. I have quilted densely with Glide thread, for example, which is a 40 wt thread, and was surprised it did not stiffen the quilt. Cotton thread when densely machine quilted, on the other hand, can stiffen up a quilt a lot. I once made the mistake of stipple quilting a doll quilt with 50/3 cotton thread and it came out stiff as a board! Fine polyester thread and fine silk thread, in my opinion, are better for dense machine quilting than cotton thread.

For hand quilting, cotton thread works well for the reason mentioned above -- less thread is used. In addition, if you think about it, machine stitches "lock" together so the stitches themselves do not move. In hand quilting, a running stitch is used, which means that there is "give" in the quilting lines. I'm pretty sure this contributes to the softness of hand quilting as well.

I agree about hand quilting and washing contributing to softness. About 30 years ago I hand quilted a baby quilt that was used by the mother and frequently washed and dried in the washing machine. Almost 20 years later I was able to handle the quilt, which had obviously been well-loved and well-used. The binding had frayed along the edges. What was remarkable for me was the quilt's softness. It was like rubbing a cloud against my face! In that particular quilt I had used Mountain Mist Blue Ribbon 100% cotton batting. (Note: this is not a batting I recommend for hand quilting, as it is relatively hard to needle.) This batting started out as softer than, say, Warm and Natural, but it was nowhere near as soft at the beginning as after 15 years or so of machine washings. I suspect most cotton battings will soften up with multiple washings, but I'm thinking those that start out with a stiffer drape will probably never soften up as much as others.

mojo11

I think most machine quilted quilts are soooo over quilted. I hand quilt and mine are pretty soft and drape nicely. This is only mho.