Choosing Fabric for Puff Quilts
Pick fabric you love because puff quilts are four times the sewing as a reqular quilt. Which is great news if you love sewing.
TIP: To make your quilt design look “random” use more than 5 types of cotton fabric, solids and print fabrics. Avoid even number varieties of fabric.
If you choose fabrics that have a pattern/right side, you have pay close attention. When sewing the first three sides of the squares, pleat your puff squares so that the “open” bottoms is all the same side on your patterned fabric. When you piece together the puffs, leave the open side all on the same side for closing up the last side and keeping all prints going the right way.
Choosing your Puff Quilt Pattern/Design
The truth is you don’t need to pay for a pattern but you do need to have a plan.
This link outlines the pros and cons of differen styles of puffs. Whether you are going for a plush mega puff quilt to lounge on or a sweet one of a kind baby blanket read these tips before you pull out the sewing machine.
TIP: The smaller puff blocks make the quilt malleable and easier to fit in the sewing machine. So don’t think big puff will be “easier” to create as they have their own hurdles.
TIP: For your first puff quilt consider using a layer cake or other precut size that works with yourc desired look.
Stuffing / Batting for Puff Quilts
For the stuffing, I have found that it can be made of many things other than you typical store bought polyfoam. You can shred scraps of quilt batting with your roatery cutter. Open up old pillow and refresh the batting inside and stuff it into the puff quilt.
TIP: If using a lot of different material for stuffing, mix all the materials together so the different texture are evenly dispersed acrossed the quilt. Careful the quilt stuffing isn’t too heavy!
TIP: When you are at the point of stuffing the squares, keep one puff square aside as your comparison to compare all puffs to to ensure they are about the same size and firmness.
Tips for Sewing Puff Quilts
Tip: The best thing about Puff Quilts is that they are forgiving. If pleats aren’t aligned isn’t not noticable in the end product after the squares have been stuffed. That goes for misalligned corners too. The wrinkly puffs will disguise most things.
Tip: Sew the opposite side pleats first. The next two sides won’t requring pinning or clipping.
Specialy Tools Puff Quilts
Puff quilts are extremly heavy, especially when sewing a queen puff quilt or a puff quilt with what I call, mega puffs. Whatever style of puff quilt you are making, there are tools that can make it easier to manage. While you don’t need anything super special to make a puff quilt, these items may help and you may already have some of them.
Extra hands and extra machines are a great way to make this big project go fast. If more than one person helps piece and sew the puffs together the project is very fast and is easy to divide among sewers to work at home/apart. Extra hands can help when feeding the quilt through your machine as the quilt becomes very heavy. Learn more about what sizes to sew puff quilts.
Extra large clips: Once a part of of my canvas stretching supplies in the garage, now in my sewing box. These big clips coming in handy when trying to hold everything together at the end with the puff quilt is at it’s largest.
A needle puller comes is handy too. I would not of been able to make the XL Mega Puff Quilt without it. The tool is easy to use and you can pull through lots of layers like when doing quilt ties.
Thimbles and rubber finger grips are also helpful for pulling through many layers, protecting fingers and doing the final hand work of the puff quilt edging.
Whatever size or style puff quilt you are making I hope these tips and tools help you make a quilt that is promised to be favorite among your family.
