Tristan and Islode Quilt

Someone wrote to me about trapunto quilting. They said I was almost doing it with my new machine. Not knowing what it was, I googled it and found that my experiments with my new machine were hardly new. This idea of telling a stitched story has been around for at least 700 years. The quilt above is known as the Tristan and Islode quilt which tells their story. It’s Sicilian from the 1300’s. It’s one of the earliest known quilts and the only medieval one. Traputo means to embroider in Italian. The raised designs are stuffed from the back with batting then stitched so the design pops.

4 thoughts on “Tristan and Islode Quilt

  1. This is beautiful! I can’t get my head around how the artist could actually construct this back in the 1300’s, with the resources they had then. But it is beautiful!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Full Moon Fiber Art