For the last few years quilts in shows have become more and more heavily quilted. This seems to impress judges. With this quilt I want to do less quilting. (I still want to impress the judges, but this time with painting. I know that may require a small miracle, quilt judges are often not impressed with the skill of a paintbrush).

This small version of Arbol de Vida (16 inches square) was done a couple months ago to try out the painting technique. I was pleased with the results except that the rabbit looked like it needed more quilting. Or needed to be fatter. I do not want to quilt the animals and obsure the painting. I only want to quilt them enough to give the body definition. I think trapunto may solve this problem.

Remember this old thing, this was my experimental sample I made when I was trying to figure out how I wanted to make this quilt. It was the perfect thing to try out some trapunto on. Although this fish is larger than any of my animals on the quilt, it will give me a good idea of what two layers of wool batting will do when it is layered under an animal.
I want the animals to be fat and stuffed on a quilted black background. The two layers of wool batting really puffed up this big fish nicely but then I was worried about what would happen when there were skinny legs and tentacles on an animal as well as a smaller body. So the odd shapes resembling animal parts were my trial for that. It seems that wool flattens down so nicely when it is quilted closely that it will not be a problem.