Sticking them in place

In some ways this is easier to stick the trapunto shapes on the back of the top, but not on this quilt. When I've done it this way before, it's not been on a quilt where the trapunto cutting will show on the front. Even that would not be too great a problem if the shapes weren't so large, particularly those big feathers which go round the corners on the border. I'm finding I have to stick one or two down then wait a good ten minutes for it to dry enough so I can move to another area. Love these Scotch glue sticks from Costco. Although they say permanent, they do wash out. With the ironing board set up so I can watch the tennis at Wimbledon, it's quite a good way to spend the afternoons.

Remember that wholecloth?

The one with the diamond fill in between the central motif and the borders. Remember how I was going to trapunto alternate diamonds but when I worked my way round the alternates didn't match? Well after putting it away again and the third attempt also failed. I released all the trapuntoed diamonds by going over very carefully the water soluble thread with an auto paint brush loaded with water. Oh what joy, not! I can tell you it's much much easier to unpick normal thread. Still it's done now and I shall do something entirely different in this area. Perhaps more feathers. There was a time when I believed the adage out there in the quilting world, the eye should have somewhere to rest. I've been looking at the older wholecloths and it's become obvious these women had never heard of this and their quilts are wonderful, so feathers it is then.....

It doesn't look like much but

it is 6 and a half hours work. and nearly 1,000 yds of thread today and yesterday.

Click to see these larger.

Water Soluble Thread

It's not often I use dark fabric and dark batting with trapunto work so I took these photos today as you can see the stitch easily. You only need to quilt with the water soluble thread outside your motif so it doesn't take as long as you might think. And you don't have to be amazingly accurate as if you go outside the line the background quilting will hold down and inside the line the other stitching in the motif will hold it in place. The exception to this is when you do shadow trapunto and then you must be as accurate as you would be with the final quilting.
The back
The front.


All done to Lou Reed, Walk on the Wildside and Leonard Cohen's Allelujah (sp?) with me singing along.
I found a neat little thing on blogger toady. If you have your home town in your profile, you can click on it and it will show you all the other bloggers in your area. 107 in Fleet. Sadly most of them abandoned, but one by a skateboarding friend of my DD and one of her school mates from way back when. Seems like I might be not only the most prolific but also the 'oldest blogger in town' (sad that, grin). Though there was another blogger building a kit car with a non disclosed age who could be older........

I never want to eat again

It seems like a good idea at the time but all this food doesn't make you feel good does it? Today we're heading out (shopping) but at least we'll be away from temptation for most of the day. Tonight is simple fare of jacket potato, salad and turkey (don't fancy cold goose at all).
I'm getting used to my giant screen (or it seems like a giant after my last one). I wonder why the header on my blog is no longer centralised on the photo. It still looks the same on the laptops.
The cutting away of the trapunto on the diamond grid is coming along slowly. There is no rush as I can't pin it up and my dear friend Pauline doesn't have a minute to spare until next year when she (with a little help from me lying down) can pin it for quilting. If you click on the photo, the marks where Sinclair has climbed all over it with his wet paws shows up. Never mind, it will all come out in the wash. My hands are developing blisters and getting quite tender. I had vague memories of this and then remembered how hands used to hurt in the days before rotary cutters. Where would we be without them?

Machine trapunto with the lengthy cutting and an ooops!

There are a couple of dangers when cutting away machine trapunto. One is getting careless and cutting the wrong bit! You can see I cut out the wrong diamonds a couple of times. I'll fix it with sticking down with glue stick. The other is cutting through the front fabric. I have done this and had to get very creative with a fix. But not on this piece.
This is the sample piece. It's a quarter of the middle, with a bit of extra grid on the side. I'm doing this sample because some one asked what backgrounds am I going to use and I realized it would be better to do a test run to see if any stretched the fabric too far or shrinks it in to much.

You can see that with no trapuntoed grid outside the circle how it is gathered. I shall try a couple of different background fillers to see if this shrinks it in, I'll also try a bit of the grid with no trapunto.
This cutting away on just this quarter of the middle took two evenings. (our evenings are somewhat short as we generally don't have dinner until about 8pm).
I did a bit of cutting away at the Guild Area day yesterday as well. It's one of those jobs which take time and whilst not needing 100% concentration, 90% is good (grin).