How much laundering can polyester batting stand without bearding?

Hi Carol,
Hmm, it's not the bearding that I find to be the problem with polyester batting. It's losing 'loftiness' that I notice first with it. I've washed kids quilts for years and years, but I find that they get flatter and flatter, and finally resemble cotton batting after a time. I noticed that hand-tied quilts tend to have the polyester batting separate and find torn spots in it, but not machine quilted quilts. So, after years of quilting and washing (I have 6 kids, and they like puffy quilts, so I usually put poly batting in their quilts), I don't think that I've ever seen the quilts have bearding. Only a few spots in my older tied quilts (before I had a quilting machine), and these were just a few spots where the yarns had pulled the batting through right when I quilted them. But you do lose loftiness. It's not a problem if you have a low loft batting though. Just keep in mind that the more a poly quilt is washed, the flatter it will become.
Are you hand quilting or machine quilting? In either case, I really don't think you'll have much of a problem with bearding if you're using today's polyester batting. I used to have poly battings spun for me on each quilt, and these would have more tendency to split and beard, but with today's methods, I think the battings are more stable than in the past.

Good luck with the quilting! Even though I use about 95% cotton battings now, I still have great success with the poly battings on the market today. (I don't use Mountain Mist batting though, as it tends to tear too easily to use for either hand quilting in a Grace frame, or machine quilting. That brand tends to be for only hand quilting on an old fashioned full frame, as it just falls apart when you roll the quilt with other frames.)

Kathy