Saturday, March 14, 2009

Trapunto, my newest technique

pattern © Linda Roy 2009
I took my first quilting class today. Of course my teacher, Linda Roy, did the beautiful work above. It was one of several examples she made for the class, which was entitled "A Touch of Elegance." She gave us the patterns she designed and during the class, taught all three techniques used in the piece above: ruching, trapunto, and stippling.


Rusching (pronounced roo-shing) is what makes the scrunched up flower in the center of the picture above. It's kind of a very sophisticated yo-yo.

Trapunto (which means embroidery in Italian and comes from the Latin "to prick") is a technique used to make something three-dimensional by outlining a shape then stuffing it with yarn or batting. Yarn makes those oval outlines and polyester stuffing makes the little circular puffs.

Stippling is the type of quilting used inside the oval outlines. The stitches are REALLY close together and function to flatten down the area it is used in.

The photo is Linda demonstrating stippling. She is very comfortable with this kind of intricate work. Look at her Irish Creme quilt to see why.
Linda recommended the tools and supplies she uses and even put together a kit full of some hard to find things for the class. It was organized and though I was probably the least experienced quilter there, I had a good time and learned so much.

I have tons of ideas for adding stuffing to my projects. Some of the other students were saying that if you used a colored yarn to stuff the ovals, the color would peek through to slightly tint the quilt. I like that.

The class was organized by the Smoky Mountain Quilters, a quilting guild that I belong to. They offer a lot of classes. One I really hate to have missed was a workshop given by Nellie Durand teaching her technique of collaging small scraps of fabric. Here are some examples of work from that class.

The Smoky Mountain Quilters are still accepting quilts for the show in May. More information about that here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I checked out her quilts, they are incredible! Did she give any inidication to how long a project like "Irish Cream" took her? It is such intricate work that I can only imagine...I do have alot of yarn in my cabinet...this is something I may have to explore further! Thanks for introducing me to a new technique! Your great for that!

Brooke said...

I've heard several women in the guild say that Linda Roy makes one quilt a year.

She designs everything herself, makes it, then sends it off to be admired in quilt shows.

She wins a lot of prizes and prize money each year.

Athrist said...

It looks both fantastic and really difficult!

via swap-bot :-)