I recently made a trip to Kingsmen Quilting in Rochester, IL with a couple of quilting friends. Kingsmen is a large online provider of thread, rulers, batting and notions for longarm quilters. I’d ordered from them before I knew they were within 1 hour of where I live! So, some friends I’d met online through a quilting forum and I all met (for the first time!) and made the drive to Rochester. That’s a story I’ll relate later!

Kingsmen is located in a garage on a residential farm outside of Rochester. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Rochester, it is located a few miles southeast of Springfield, IL.

We had the place to ourselves with the owner and got first-rate service. I bought some new thread to try out – Glide, Premo Soft, and Magna Glide bobbins from Filtec. A couple of rulers and an extra set of zippers. But, my main purpose was to compare batting. I’d been purchasing 9 yard boards of Legacy cotton and Legacy 80/20 blend (with no scrim) and loved how they quilted and washed up. I had also just purchased some Quilters Dream wool. I wanted to compare Legacy, Hobbs and Quilters Dream. Mr. Taft brought in several rolls for me to feel and look over. I have to say I absolutely LOVE the feel of Legacy…. cotton, 80/20, and the wool over Hobbs. I also prefer their wool over Hobbs and Quilters Dream. Kingsmen offers their batting with free shipping occasionally and will advertise on the Machine Quilters Professional Yahoo group forum. I highly recommend you try Legacy batting if you haven’t already. I bought a roll of 80/20 with scrim and plan on getting a 9 yard board of wool soon (if I hadn’t just purchased some packages of Quilters Dream, I would have purchased it then).

Just my own honest opinion.  I know people are happy with Hobbs and Quilters Dream, too; but, after comparing them side by side, the Legacy brand was noticeably softer feeling.  And I can tell you from experience that it quilts extremely well, with no thin spots in the batting.