Proper quilters will want to avert their eyes! But I wanted the quilted effect and the strength of the combined fabric so I did a bit of speed quilting.
I wanted to make lots of seats the same. I aimed for 15 but ran out of time, I made 9 this way. I’m writing it up as if it was 3 as they come out as batches of 3.
For three seats you will need:
- A total of 1m of colour matched fabric. 110cm wide (standard poplin width).
- 3x 40cm square of matching/contrasting fabric.
- 3x 40cm square of heavier weight fabric for base.
- About 2m of batting.
- 1.5m of plain backing fabric, cotton or poly cotton.
- Matching thread.
- 3x Zip about 30cm.
- 3 cubic feet of bean bag beans.
Stages:
- Cut 16 x 3inch strips
- Sew strips together in lines, I used my overlocker but it isn’t essential.
- Pin batting and backing to the whole piece and topstitch together. I did a single row on each strip first to hold in place and then added more lines. As you see it isn’t very accurate!
- Slice the whole ‘quilt’ into three horizontal strips.
- Quilt the 50cm square before you cut your circle out of it, otherwise the circle would become distorted by the quilting process.
- Now a Measure the length of the strip, mine was 98cm after quilting. Divide by Pi (3.14). This will give you the guide for your circle top. Pi gives you the diameter of the circle, mine was 31cm.
- I made a template to cut my circles, you might have a simpler method for cutting a circle! Added a seam allowance of 1cm all the way round.
- Cut round the template to get a nice clean circle for the top.
- I used the same template to cut the base. I then cut a slice off for a zip. It is better to put the zip near the edge as it helps with filling. Also it uses less zip!
- I like to put zips for soft furnishing in upside down, the zip pull then sits inside the pouffe. It also prevents little fingers from opening it up and spilling the beans! I didn’t use a special zip foot, using a regular foot seems to leave enough zip to make up for the seam allowance, then you get a circle again when it is sewed together. This all might make more sense in the pictures! Leave the zip done up where you split it open and together where you haven’t spilt it yet (see picture) this will make it much much easier to sew in.
- Sew the wide strip which will become the side of the pouffe together at the short ends. I forgot to do this but if I was doing it again I would sew twice for strength.
- Pin the tops and bases to the cylinder you have made and do a quick sew with big stitches, I set my machine stitch length to 5. Then remove the pins and sew again with a shorter stitch.
- Your inside out pouffe should have a zip pull exposed so you can open it up and turn out the right way.
- It’s worth firmly shaping the edges before filling.
- Fill with as many beans as you can get in.
- Close the zip and it is finished!
The Pumpkin Room 