Puff Quilt - mini tutorial

 

Have You ever tried quilting and even puff quilting? Let me tell You - it's fun. My favourite thing in this kind of work is You need to be focused when You are starting, but later on You will work on autopilot ( DO I have to tell You can watch Your favourite tv show when on autopilot...)

I have made my first puff quilt project this December. I made four chair cushions for my Mom as a gift. As I have said before the first one was a challenge, the next ones was pure fun with Vikings or Elementary I don't remember exactly...

First thing You need to do when making a puff quilt is cutting Your material to squares. I made the quilt with two different patterned materials - dotted and stripped. The other material is only used on the back of quilt and it will not be seen, so You can use the material You hate, as I did :)

 

 So when cutting You have to remember the front squares have to be larger than the back ones, in my project (if my memory serves well) the front ones were 11,5 cm, the lower 10 cm. For one pillow I had to have 25 back ugly squares, 13 dotted squares, 12 stripped squares. See the main photos if You would like to count Yourself :)

It's sewing time now. What You have to do now is take 1 back and 1 front square, put their back sides together. Line up the top corner of this two squares and start sewing, before You get to the middle, line up the bottom corners. You will get a pleat at a center of Your square sew it and continue to the end of this side. You should have one edge of this mini-pillow now.  Do the same with two other edges.

Before sewing the last edge You have too stuff Your mini-pillow. My first idea was too stuff them as fully as possible - It's not such a great idea - It's very hard to sew them together. After stuffing make the last edge, also with plead in the middle.

Now continue making mini-puff-pillows until You will have enough for Your project. I had to have 25 for one pillow, with means 100 for 4 pillows. So if You are thinking making pleat is a little hard and You are not making it perfectly, let me tell You after about 20 of them You will be a specialist :)

Next step is grouping and sewing puff-pillows into rows - I had 5 rows for each pillow. To make a row take as many elements as row demands, put them in correct order (and position I had stripes that I wanted to be vertical - I made few mistakes...) and then sew edges on the back side that You don't see the seem in front. If You made Your pillows very stuffed it may not be that simple - my advise - try, try and try again.

 When You have enough rows sew them together and You are done, at least with this side. It's up to You what You will do with the back side of Your work, for now it's not very interesting, I made my back side simple with the dotted material. I have also made this tapes that will tie a cushion to chair (not the chair from the photo :) those are mine ) Experience has tough me to make this kind of tapes from the material not ribbons. Ribbons looks great but are too slippery to tie properly.