cut a piece of muslin shape & pin on the back of the top. hand or machine stitch the piece on top that you want to stuff. then cut your slit in the muslin piece on the back, stuff it & sew your slit closed. then sandwich as usual...hope it turns out!

Do an internet search on Trapunto. That's the name of the technique you are describing.

Yes, I did the internet search before posting on board; as I said, everything came up fairly small with a lot of intricate quilting or embroidery, this child's quilt will have pretty large appliques, not nearly like searches brought up.

Thank you all for tips; I think I will fool around, first with double batting on back before making slit; if it were a wall hanging, I would have no trouble doing the slit and stuffing but with washing, it gives me pause. You folks are great with support!

See if you can get your hands on this book:

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

It has a complete chapter on stuffed trapunto and several techniques with how to achieve it. With wonderful pictures. What you describe can be done by cutting a slit in the backing and stuffing in additional batting or stuffing. The trick is you need to outline quilt the area to be stuffed so the stuffing stays put. You can also stuff with a fat yarn as demonstrated on this blog:
http://quiltsalott.blogspot.com/2011...o-by-hand.html

Another option you can try is applique the prestuffed figures to the quilt after it is completed.

http://www.fivegreenacres.com/wp/200...ique-tutorial/

Perhaps you can apply the techniques presented in this video to your project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk9jBcbDWz8

You can definitely do the faux-trapunto around larger appliques. You want to stitch the applique to the background as usual. Then, put a piece of batting underneath that is a few inches larger than your applique. Stitch just around your applique (on the top), and then trim the excess batting from the back. Repeat as many times as needed for any applique you want to puff up. When finished, put in a full layer of batting & quilt. Going around the outside of the applique is where you need to use the small fillers. It's the filler around the outside that makes it puff because overquilting flattens out the batting around the applique, making the applique with the 2x batting stand out more than the rest of the quilt. The only thing you need to be concerned with for the applique itself is whether it needs some interior quilting in order to make it more secure &, of course, you need to take into consideration how closely your batting needs to be quilted.

Traditional trapunto requires stuffing something into the applique & you could certainly do that. It is more work to stuff the applique, but then you don't need all the extra stitching around the applique to get it to puff. For the letters on this quilt, I made the applique itself 2 parts, then I cut a slit in the blue to stuff it. When finished, I stitched the whole thing down to my quilt top.
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