Leah wanted to see how trapunto works. So I snapped a few pictures last night while playing with my daughter's new digital camera for her big vacation next week to Utah. Aunt Pat gave her the trip for her Confirmation/Graduation/Birthday Gift. And Aunt Pat retires officially today - so she joked with Emily that the trip would give her something to do. They are going to visit 5 of the National Parks out there and do some hiking and general sight seeing of the parks. Emily is my outdoors, active kind of girl - so she is so excited.
Anyway, back to the trapunto. First you stitch around your design that you want to be trapunto'd - normally you only have to do the outline but in this case I did the full design because of the dark fabric and I didn't want the chalk to rub off too soon. Then you need to take it and CAREFULLY cut away the batting around the stitches. Most people use some kind of polyester batting for this part. I don't like the fluffy polyester stuff but I have found I LOVE the Quilter's Dream Polyester. It is denser but will fill in the areas beautifully once the quilting is completed. And it doesn't shift on you when you wash it.Once it is trimmed you layer your backing, batting and top like normal and quilt. To get a good look to the trapunto you need a lot of quilting around the trapunto area to help pop it out. If nothing else you need to outline the area. I stitched with wash-away thread, so after I quilt it, I will wash the quilt and that white thread you see will disappear! Oh but don't forget to quilt it with regular thread first when you are doing your quilting! I'll quilt right over the wash away thread.
And and don't do like I did once! I accidently left the wash away thread in my bobbin and did some piecing. I'm not really sure what I pieced, but when I found that I still had it in my bobbin a few days later I about died. I"m not sure why I didn't look at my stuff then - but someday I'm going to wash a quilt and the seams are going to wash away! Duhhhh
So here is the back of my top. Where you see the white batting is the trapunto'd parts - or will be when I'm done!
7 comments from wonderful readers:
Oh Dawn, it's gorgeous! That is an amazing polyester batt too. It certainly is much denser because most polyester looks see through! Your fans are so perfect. I do free hand pretty well so far but fans are the next thing I intend to practice and try my hand at doing! Great pictures!
Hey busy lady, that is going to be such a neat quilt with the trapunto added...it was already a beauty, but now more..wow!!
NOt sure how you can work full time and get soooo much done!! You must be WonderWoman...*VBS* Hugs, Finn
The back side of your work looks like the fluffy clouds you see out of airplane windows :o)
I have a top that I made about 3 years ago with appliqued leaves on that I need to do this to and haven't got round to it yet - you've reminded me - maybe I'll get it out sometime soon
I think it will be luscious once finished
So I'm getting the idea... but how do you prevent the batting from snagging onto feed dogs or the sewing foot? That's one of my biggest problems when I free motion. I'm always having to unsnag a piece of batting from my foot when I'm trying to put a quilt in place.
Oooh! I like the back of your liberated logs too! The pic makes them look like such soft, lovely colors.
Can we see the front again? :D
Ooh that looks wild. D'oh on piecing with the dissolving thread. I agree with Finn - you are Wonder Woman.
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