A Puffy Project

I brought out my trusty number two this week to work on the next project I have been thinking about. It was time for the Bernina to go in for its annual check up and tuning and since it has been about a year and a half since the last one and I have just finished the last of the Mario quilts, it was time for her to have a little time at the spa to rest up!

I love my trusty number two. A sturdy Singer Touch and Sew works just as well today as she did when my parents bought and refurbished her for my high school graduation present. I really love this machine and it was a fun weekend sewing away in my cool basement in the heat of the summer!

I have piled up a bunch of projects in my head while I have been sewing away on my Mario quilts. One of the projects I have been wanting to tackle is a puff quilt. I have had a pile of fabric in my stash since David and I were newlyweds. My MIL used to sew high end window treatments and had many leftover awkwardly shaped pieces of nice fabric and she gave them to me once when she was cleaning out things at her house.

Many pieces were large enough for me to use for windows in various homes where we have lived over the years. Every room in our first apartment was decked out in the fabrics she handed down to me. The last home we lived in had many basement windows that were old and ugly. I was able to make curtains and cover them up which made our time down there much more enjoyable.

After all of these years, I still have a large pile of fabric, good quality fabric in fact, despite their odd shapes. Being the soccer mom that I am who usually has a kid or two tagging along to games, I get complaints when the blanket they are sitting on gets damp from the morning dew. I have been thinking while sewing 1.5 inch Mario squares that if I used the fabric from my MIL which is great quality and heavy duty, make a puff quilt and back it with water proof vinyl like material, it will keep the dew from soaking through to the top.

So...I went through my big stack of oddly shaped drapery fabric and sorted between the good prints and the lining fabric along with a few old sheets and cut 5" squares out of the good stuff and the 4" squares out of the linings and sheets.

I was pretty amazed at how the colors fit into two different camps (I actually shouldn't be surprised thinking about early nineties interior decorating color swatches). Pleating each side of the 5" squares I pinned them each to a 4" square. After sewing three sides I spent our family night NCIS marathon stuffing batting into each "puff" and pinning the fourth edge, readying it to sew shut.

The 4" square will not be seen in the end product so I am very excited about using up old fabric that I won't use for anything else. After my first batch which included a little bit of everything I had, I was able to set up a couple of color schemes. One is heavy on the forest green and mauve, the other is blue and peachy. I started focusing on the green and mauve and have pinned and stuffed many more of those. I will make that one first.

I have a forest green color vinyl table cloth that I am going to be using for the back. It will keep the dampness off of anyone sitting on the quilt on the grass and it will also hold up being thrown in the back of the van and pulled out for events that require sitting on the ground. I can't wait to see one put together. So far, I have spent all of $8.00 on the batting. I should be able to make one and a half quilts with that batting. The rest of the quilt will not cost anything. I love using something that would have otherwise be thrown away!

This next week we are doing a garage sale at our house so I won't have too much time to sew. Hopefully by the end of the week I will be back at work on it because I am looking forward to seeing how these old fabrics look when new life is breathed into them.