Nov 06 08
Quick Trapuntoed Wall Hanging and Playing with a New Thread
I threw together a quickly fused wall hanging to play around a bit with threads. Here’s a shot of the fused top before anything was done:
…and here’s a shot of the top before it’s been placed into the quilt sandwich. Notice that all of the decorative thread work has been completed BEFORE it’s in a bulky sandwich!!!
I placed some batting scraps behind each flower (one at a time to make it easier to work), and here’s a shot of the trapuntoed large flower (all this is just the TOP since it hasn’t been placed into a quilt sandwich yet):
Can you see that heavy thread stitched in loops inside the flower? That is a new Italian thread that is pretty heavy, so it makes a nice statement. What REALLY makes it cool, though, is that it’s 1/2 wool and 1/2 acrylic (that part is to make it strong enough to withstand machine work). It’s made by an Italian company called Tristen Threads (www.cucirinitrestelle.com). If you ask for it at your quilt shop and they don’t have it, let your LQS owner know they carry it at Checker Distributors. Anyway, I digress! What’s neat about this thread is that the wool component makes it slightly “furry,” so it adds a wonderful texture to your quilt top. Here’s a shot of a spool and I think you can see that it has this slight “furriness” to it:
Here’s a shot of it on another quilt sandwich where I was playing with different brands of markers to color in my hyperquilted pansies. You can see how much heavier it is than the gold rayon thread I used in the hyperquilted design:
(By the way, most of the expensive fabric markers I tried had problems with bleeding on the fabric, so my favorite remains the Fabrimarkers by DryMark ). Anyways, back to this small wall hanging! Here’s a closeup of the small flower after it’s trapuntoed and decorated with a bit of thread work:
…and here’s a closeup of a leaf and a stem/swirl. I used no batting behind the leaves so they are free motion embroidered fusible web pieces, and the stems/swirls are backed by a REALLY lightweight batting because I don’t want them to poof out very much:
And last but not least, here is a shot of the backside of the top once all the trapunto and embroidery has been done:
…you can kind of tell that there are 2 types of batting. Hopefully, this will create varying levels of protrusion once it’s quilted! I’ll post pics once it’s done!
As usual, Patsy, wonderful inspiring work!
thank you!
your quilting always inspires me. thank you!
Thank you so much for the great information! I have been working very hard on mastering machine quilting and you have been a great inspiration. Do you have any recommendations for the batting types that you wouldn’t mind sharing? Thank you again!
I love cucirini thread! You can also buy it at: http://www.longarmsupplies.com .