January 2016 Workshop Trapunto and Italian Quilting with Irene Pugmire

This month was slightly different, as we had decided to have a morning meeting to discuss recent proposals from The Embroiderers' Guild, together.​

​After lunch Gina introduced our speaker, who is one of our members, Irene Pugmire.  Irene was going to show us how to do Trapunto and Italian Stuffed Quilting.

Irene has been a member of The Embroiderers' Guild for the last 15 years both here and in Kent.  As well as other embroidery qualifications, Irene studied Trapunto with Silvia Critcher between 1970 -2010.​

​Irene began by explaining the different types of quilting. Trapunto is stuffed odd shapes like flowers and needs to be stuffed with toy filler. It raises the surface giving more richness than unstuffed pieces. Old Trapunto pieces are lined with coarse material.
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.

Irene also showed us the different patterns.  We were shown a flower sample with ½ inch channels, and a butterfly bag together with some patterns we could choose if we didn't want to use our own.​

Here are the stages we had to follow:

·         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.
 

·         When stuffing a curve, we would  need to come out at the back half way
​          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.

Our thanks to Irene for an enjoyable workshop.

Carolynne Parkinson