Wadding (batting, polyester fill, spray cotton in mill English) is the lofted layer that traps air. It is not interlining (a thin skeleton). It is not lining (a sliding cloth). A puffer is shell + fill + lining. Confusing the three words is how a fusible mill gets asked to quote a 200 g pad.
TrimGem samples polyester fills as a catalogue family: gsm, fibre type, bonded or loose.
Spray-bonded wadding
Carded polyester web, sprayed with an acrylic binder (or blended with low-melt fibre), dried, pressed. Soft or firm by recipe. Light, springy, wash-stable if the binder and fibre were honest. Process: open → card → web → spray both faces → dry/set → cut → roll.
Fibre quality is the product: fine, highly crimped, good cohesion. Three-dimensional spiral crimp outperforms flat wave crimp for loft and recovery. Hollow fibre raises warmth per gram. Typical hollow spiral polyester for apparel sits around 6.6–7.7 dtex, 51–76 mm staple.
Stock gsm often 40–300 g/m² (industrial ranges go far wider). Thickness from millimetres to centimetres. Widths to 3 m-plus. Ask OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100, RoHS, SDS as the market needs.
“Silk-like” wadding (imitation silk cotton)
A finer spray-bonded type: siliconised hollow microfibre plus some low-melt, very little binder, calendered. Surface is smooth, slightly lustrous, thin, wash-hardy, low fibre migration. Hand is the down-adjacent polyester story. gsm from ~20 to 300 in steps. Used in better fashion outerwear and in quilts that must survive a washing machine.
Related mill names
- Soft wadding — cheap, used in a lot of fashion outerwear.
- Open / “pine” wadding — slippier, womenswear.
- Calendered (“ironed”) — skins on both faces, washable, mid price.
- Washed wadding — sold as laundry-stable.
- Binder-free (thermal-bond) — loft with strength from low-melt fibre; quilts, infant, gloves.
- Pearl / bead fill — PP-like beads, even and bouncy, pillows and toys more than coats.
- PP stuffing (toy fibre) — resilient, not an apparel thermal design.
- “Down cotton” / imitation down — micro polyester; not down (next note).
- Hard / board wadding — mattresses, not jackets.
Migration and wash are how a fill fails in a shop. Fine siliconised fibre will walk through a 190T lining unless the lining is down-proof (density, calender or coat) or the quilt lines are close enough. Binder that is too light pills into lumps after a 40 °C wash; binder that is too heavy is a cardboard quilt. Thermal-bond (low-melt fibre, no acrylic spray) is the cleaner chemistry for infant and for programs that dislike acrylic handle — it still needs a wash trial, because a weak bond opens into a clump.
gsm is not warmth by itself. A 120 g hollow spiral will loft more than a 120 g flat-crimp solid fibre. Quote fibre + gsm + loft after wash, not only the roll mass. Width must fit the marker; a 1.5 m roll on a 1.6 m panel is a splice in the chest.
Spec line
Write bonded web vs loose fill, fibre (hollow / siliconised / dtex), gsm or fill weight, width, wash remaining loft, migration (needled or glued shell), and chemistry (OEKO-TEX). Down-proof the lining if the fibre is fine. Do not label polyester fill as down. Do not spec a 200 g wadding as a 30 g fusible. Warmth numbers (fill power, clo) are the following notes when the fill is down or when a lab quotes thermal resistance.