advice on doing trapunto on panel
 

I got this for my grs room and want to make the large ones stand out. if I do it by hand how many strands of thread 1 or 2 do I need to try and do tiny stitches? Another other advice would be helpful.
Thanks Gale

One strand of thread is ample for hand quilting. With trapunto your first sandwich will only be the top and a high loft batting (like Hobbs polydown or wool) You do a simple outline stitch around the elements. You can also do this with your machine and water soluble thread.

Cut away the batting so only your trapunto elements have batting behind them. Then you sandwich with another batting and backing as normal. The trick about trapunto is that it requires fairly dense background quilting for the effect to truly be noticed. See if you can get your hands on the book "The Essential Quilter" by Barbara Chaney. To me this is the hand quilters bible. She explains all techniques thoroughly with exercises and lots of pictures. She covers everything from Sashiko to Trapunto to true stippling (teeny tiny micro stitching you do by hand). You can pick it up used on Amazon for basically the price of shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-.../dp/0715305697

I agree with feline!

I think trapunto would work great to accent the dolphins and whales with another layer of batting. But I learn to do it by machine and not sure if you could do the same procedure by hand.

My teacher, a national quilting judge, taught us to do it this way: Take a bad piece of flannel or cheese cloth and stitch around it. I did hand stitching. Then take the fluffy yarn, I call it Hallmark yarn since they use to tie their packages in it, and take apart the 3 strands because you will use only one strand. Use a tapestry needle with the large eye and pull the yarn thru the holes in the backing until you have it as full as you want it. Keep checking from the front. The last time I did this was with fish and I did not have flannel or cheese cloth but I found an old piece of sheer curtain. Believe me, it worked great. After you have the area full, then I put it into a hoop to quilt. That way it pulls it tight and makes it really good. Good luck with whatever method you use. Of course with the yarn, try to match the color, or use the white as in the batting.