Italian quilting has wider lines stuffed with wool. Boutis or French style is much finer, narrower lined quilting and old boutis was lined with finer material.
· Take a pattern and using a light box trace it onto tracing paper.
· Put the pattern back to front, and trace through to transfer the pattern onto the fabric.
· Put muslin behind the fabric (pin it on) then tack the two pieces all the way
around to keep everything together whilst sewing. (Trapunto is also lovely in silk but
may need an extra piece of cotton before the muslin, as silk frays so easily).
· We also had to draw diagonal lines across (but not going through) our pattern, onto
the fabric.
· Stitch around the pattern with contrasting or the same coloured thread.
After the first row, snip a hole through the muslin in the back of the shape and
stuff with toy stuffing using a craft wooden stick to ease it in and then sew the hole
shut.
· When we had stitched across the diagonal lines, working from
behind and through the muslin, we threaded wool through the channels.
through the curved line. When going back into complete the line, Irene suggested
that we should always leave a little piece of wool showing, so that the wool is not
pulled too tight in the sewn channel.
· When everything is stuffed, we need to machine stitch all around the outside to hold
the wool still.
· Finally, we need to add a backing piece of fabric and stitch the pattern and lines a
second time.
Too soon, our afternoon had come to an end, and we took our work away to complete at a later date. Here are some photographs of our afternoon's work.
Carolynne Parkinson