Do you know what that is? It’s not terribly well known because it involves a rather tedious process. Traditionally, you sew/quilt around a pattern or shape. Then from the back side, you slit the backing, stuff in some poly fill and close it by whip-stitching by hand. Slow, right?
It doesn’t have to be. It’s as simple as using two layers of puffy batting–polyester, not cotton. For my quilt, I cut a large central rectangle about 16″x18″, backing a bit larger, and two layers of batting. I cut the top layer just a scant bit smaller to help avoid making the side seams too thick.
Layer up and pin or baste. For something small like this, I usually just pin, but suit yourself. (You can even get special quilters’ safety pins.) I admit to using straight pins, but I DO sometimes stick myself. (I keep little alcohol pads in the sewing room to clean up any blood.)
Working on the top, simply quilt around the figures through all four layers. You can quilt by using a quilt hopping foot and lower the feed dog for free-motion. Or, you can just drive your machine along the lines. Truly, it’s not hard.. The layers of batting will automatically puff up the areas inside! (See photo below.)
You can make one central block like mine (below) or several small blocks. It’s just a matter of the effect you want. For my “Those Wild Eyes” lap quilt, I added a little folded black border around the center piece, then pieced on large blocks of different animal skins as well as some other lengths of border fabric. I drew up the pattern on graph paper to easily figure the finished block sizes.
But wait, what about quilting the remainder of the quilt? Georgia Bonesteele wrote a book about quilting sections and then combining them. However, I just loaded the top on my longarm with the center all puffy and quilted the top, sides and bottom. THEN I went back and sewed again through all, including the final backing–yes, top, 2 layers of batting, first backing of that section and then final quilt backing. Since it’s hard to control free motion on a longarm, I used my regular machine and retraced the earlier stitching, this time attaching it to the final quilt backing because I couldn’t leave that much space all unattached.
It was a little time-consuming to resew around all those faces, but it was definitely faster than stuffing and hand-whipping. And the final result is wonderfully appealing puffy texture!
Just add trapunto as one more technique to play with, maybe on a wall hanging or baby quilt. I guarantee everyone will want to touch your quilt!
Going wild in Wetumpka, Libby