Have you ever wanted to try trapunto quilting?
Well today’s tutorial we’re going to add loft and texture.
Let’s get started.
Come in real close.
I want to show you all of the loft that is created by trapunto quilting.
In today’s tutorial I’m going to actually walk you through more of the steps than the
actual machine quilting itself so that you can understand the layer by layer process
to get this extra poof in our quilting.
And you can do it for blocks and you can do it for your whole quilt and in a lot of sections.
It’s really really fun.
Now in order to do it I want you to have a favorite design.
Of course I always have mine, my sewing machine.
I’ve already transferred it onto my block or my fabric.
We’re just going to call it the fabric for the rest of the video.
Now hopefully you can see but I went through with a transfer paper.
And sometimes I want to go, well not sometimes.
I always want to go with as light a marking as possible.
Sometimes you can’t see it real well when you get to the machine.
So I also came on top of this with my chalk pencil.
And I chalked out many of the lines that might be a little bit more difficult to see as I’m
doing the machine quilting.
Now for the machine quilting, the first process we’re going to do is we’re going to put
the big thick batting in place.
So I’ve taken a scrap of batting.
And it just needs to fit the all over design.
And if you’re doing like a fish here and a sunset over here or something like that,
you can use a scrap and a scrap.
It does not have to be all one piece, right?
This is very fun this way.
I’ve basted it with a few safety pins into place.
And then my job is, and I’m going to do this free motion style, is I’m going to
go over to the machine and I’m going to start in the center of my project and I’m
going to do one pass as I go as free motion.
So let me show you that here.
Now if you don’t love your free motion work on that single pass, don’t worry we’re
going to have all kinds of time to come back.
But because we’re cutting that line, I don’t want you to do it and overdo it.
Just one time around please.
Ok.
And we do want to start in the center.
And now a great way to get a good start on your thread is I’ve got a good long tail
here.
I’m going to drop my needle a single stroke.
And I’m going to pull up and floss under my presser foot to bring that bobbin thread
over and out of the way.
And somehow I got myself about 17 looking thread tails.
Pull on the right one and we’ll get started.
There we go.
Ok, now for this process, like I said, we’re just going to do a single pass around.
I’m going to lock those threads in.
Don’t forget to stop and readjust those hands as necessary.
. You can even rotate your project if it makes it easier for you to see.
And I’m going to go ahead and keep working this design in and I’ll meet you back to
show you the next step.
As you can see, I’ve stitched around all of the design one time.
And now it’s time to cut away that extra lofty batting.
And I hope I pointed out early on, I get so excited about getting to the machine, that
I’m using a very lofty batting for this part.
And we’ll use a finer batting later on that’s how we get the puff and texture.
In doing this I love either a duckbill applique scissor or a curve bent applique scissor.
I want to be able to rock my scissor underneath.
And I’m going to come to this outside edge first.
And of course we should take our safety pins out of the way.
And I’m just going to cut the batting and cut right along the edge here.
Right at that stitch mark.
And I’m just going to go nice and smooth.
Of course I feel like I’m cutting upside down at the moment but hopefully that makes
it nice for you all to see.
And I’m going to do this until I’ve removed all of the batting all the way around the
outside and the inside of the design, just like in this sample right here.
Ok so you can see that that has got everything cut away, even the little grooves around the
needles and the highlights on the sewing machine.
Because we’re going to fill that in with stitching to help increase the loft.
Now from this point, it becomes a standard quilt.
So we’re going to go ahead and prepare for the basting.
So now I’ve got my quilt backing so basically just a regular layer of fabric there.
And I’ve got my lighter weight my cotton or my cotton poly blend batting now.
We’re going to lay this on.
Sorry, I’ve got to get my fuzz out of the way.
Then I’m going to use my curved safety pin.
Now if you’re doing this at home please take a moment and tape and secure your backing.
You always want your backing to be nice and taut so that we have a good basting.
But then I’m going to come back and I’m going to start in the center.
And I’m going to secure all three layers like you would a regular quilt process.
And then, you know what, I’m going to make you wait.
Let me get all the basting done and I’ll show you the next step.
Oops so sorry, I got started without you but as a reminder I did safety pin basting all
my layers and I’ve started doing the dense quilting.
But again like our normal quilting process I started with my dense quilting in the center
of the project and I’m going to work my way out.
I’ve actually just jumped over some of the batting.
And now what I’m going to do is I’m going to follow this straight line.
Like I said, if I ever need any repair work I can.
But I also like to thicken it up.
And now I can come in and just do some more dense quilting.
But what I’m thinking in my head is like, well this is a fun sewing machine, so wouldn’t
this have some neat like filigree work.
If this was a decorative old antique machine.
So you can still think about your design process and your technical process at the same time.
But what I want to do is I want to do probably two to four times the amount of quilting in
these areas.
And then as I move away from the trapunto area I can do a little bit less quilting.
And if you’re not getting the relief you want you can run that same line again so that
you’re really tacking down and pushing down and pushing up against all of the batting
that was there from the relief.
If you’re just tuning in to Man Sewing for your first time as a machine quilting video,
we’ve got a bunch of them out there.
And in those videos I always talk not sewing over your safety pins.
So let’s get this out of the way.
And then we can just finish off this little section here.
Ok and here you can see there’s a stitch there that I just fixed and another one right
here that I’m fixing.
Because I must have hit those with my scissors when I was trimming the batting away.
So that’s exactly what I meant about repair work.
There’s another one at the top.
Ready, right there.
I just fixed it again.
So just go ahead and finish in all of the fill in areas in the motif around the trapunto
area.
And then we have one last thing that we have to do.
And that really is we’re going to go back to our project and we’re going to put our
regular binding around the edge.
Now I just want to point out.
As you look at this, to get the extra loft because this is what we really want in trapunto.
As a reminder it’s extra stitching along those lines.
Lots of dense stitching in and around the trapunto area.
But then later on I can come out here and I can open up my fill a little bit more and
I’ll still be able to get the loft from that project from the design that I absolutely
love.
And you know I love designing.
And you know I love teaching this free motion machine quilting but I think we still have
a lot of stuff to cover.
So in those comments below please let me know what you still want to learn right here at
Man Sewing.