If you make your samples of an appropriate size, you can turn them into machting cushion covers.

Great advice Margo. I'm kind of in the same questioning phase myself right now. How stiff? How dense? What thread? And of course wanting to start NOW and not do the experimenting. Yep, always in a hurry.

Before you make a bed quilt with trapunto you might want to experiment with some sample "sandwiches" to decide how you want it to look.

Try different battings and different threads.

You will probably want to use a base batting (cotton or 80/20 blend?) with the trapuntoed areas filled with either wool or polyester. The density of your background quilting depends on the look you want and the battings you use, and the weight of the thread will effect the amount of stiffness in the finished product. The thinner the thread, the less stiff the result.
For instance, a background quilted with something like Superior's King Tut will be much stiffer than one quilted the same density with MasterPiece. Background fill with silk thread will be the most drape-able, but it's costly.

You can also quilt several lines of echo quilting around your trapunto motifs, but less dense for the rest of the fill.
Check out Karen McTavish's web site for some inspiration: http://www.designerquilts.com/gallery.html

Her books are great sources of information about trapuntoed quilts: http://www.designerquilts.com/products.html

Hello all

I was just wondering if it is really appropriate to use trapunto on a bed quilt.

If the answer is yes, then how densely should I quilt around the trapunto to make sure it pops without making the quilt too stiff??

TIA!!