Thursday, May 08, 2008

New Mattresses and Old(er) Quilts

Hey, I'm in the middle of trying to research what (to me) is an interesting question. I'd LOVE your input in this if you can give it to me in the next couple days.

I made quilts for all the beds in my house about 10 years ago. Some older, some newer. I still have a couple bags of standard bed-sized quilting batting in a cupboard if the notion ever strikes me to make a new one.

Yesterday I replaced the old mattress on the double bed in our guest bedroom. The replaced one was purchased in 1978, so it's lived a good happy life. Since most of it's time was spent as a guest bed.. it probably had about 10 years of real sleeping on it in that time.
Old Quilt, New Mattress
The new mattress is a new mattress. Which means it's deeper than the old one. And the quilts I made to fit the old bed no longer fit. They are about 10-14" too small in both directions. Check out the photo with another quilt underneath.

This side shot really shows the problem. Major mattress gap-osis:
Old Quilt, New Mattress Side

I've "solved" the problem by moving a queen sized quilt onto the bed. It's not perfect, but it seems to work OK.
Full Mattress, Queen Quilt

But it led me to think:

Are publishers adapting sizing recommendations for bed sized quilts to accomodate the new deeper mattresses?

Are batting manufacturers adapting the size of their batting?

It looks to me that we are in another period where the quilts that we have made no longer fit the beds that they are being made for. I remember the adjustment period when everyone switched from full to queen and then king. It was not joyous! I'm looking for answers, solutions and directions from both the industry and the quilters concerning this.

Please leave a comment with your reaction. If I'm thinking about this, other people are too. Can you point me to any good discussion or information online that I've missed? I'd appreciate it.

I also blog at: Deb's Daily Distractions and BlogHer on Mondays and Saturdays.

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