04.14
Traditionally trapunto was a form of padded quilting, usually on white fabric and was made by inserting small shreds of batting through a tiny hole in the back of a quilted motif. Nowadays there is a much simpler way of doing it using free motion machine quilting and water soluble thread. I have been wanting to try it for a while now but wasn’t quite sure how to do it until I recently got Ricky Tim’s ‘Grand Finale’ DVD, where he explains the process in detail.
I started off by tracing the design onto my fabric, I used a freezer paper template and a water soluble pen for this. The design was my adaptation of a traditional native design which I have previously done in applique.
I then removed the template and placed a piece of batting under the design and secured it in place with a few pins. I stitched round teh outline of the design using water soluble thread in both the needle and the bobbin. Once the stitching was complete I carefully cut away the excess batting, trimming as colse to teh stitching as possible.
The picture above shows the back of the design with the batting cut away. Next I took another square of batting and layered it between the top and some backing fabric. I used a variegated cotton thread to free motion quilt around the outline of the design and then to stipple the background. This part didn’t work quite so well and the stippling wasn’t really small enough or close enough to the design to make it really stand out. I was having a few problems with the adjustable settings of my quilting foot which didn’t help matters.
The finished design would have looked better with much tighter stippling and maybe on a more solid coloured background, but it was a useful learning process and I can see that this technique could have great potential when used with applique designs.
Quilter Blogs & Store Search
I hadn’t seen his DVD but I have tried a method something like this for work by hand. I cut out the batting the same size as my applique work would be finished, I lay it on the back of the fabric and then press my seam allowance over it to hold it in place (with starch sprayed on) then I flip it over and put it in place with a couple pins and do my needle turn as usually.
Karen
http://karensquilting.com/blog/
That sounds a very good way of doing it, but I guess it would work best for fairly simple shapes otherwise it might be a bit difficult to cut the batting to just the right size. I was thinkning of something like my geckos which I really much prefer to do by hand, but think might look quite good if they were a bit more padded.