How To Make A Puff Quilt The Easy Way ~Bubble Quilt ~ Puffer Quilt

hi friends traci here from the sewing channel welcome back and if you're new here welcome the story goes like this i've always wanted to make a puff quilt so what do i do i go to youtube search it out and learn how to make a puff quilt to make a puff quilt you need to have separate tiny squares typically they're five inches it's squared so they're not really too tiny these ones are just because i thought well as i practice this because i practice a lot i want to try the tiny squares the traditional way to make a puff quilt is to have each one of these puffs separate and then you sew them together so you have two pieces of fabric and then you have your polyfill inside well as you make each puff you have to pleat it that's the traditional way it was too much work i put that project aside about a month or two and then i picked it up again later which led me to this so i thought well let me try making these in a different way so that all of them are connected together and then i stuff them and i was just trying to find a more efficient way to do it because i don't want to take the long road home i just don't i know it's cute but i didn't like the method so it went back in my scrap bin and just sat for another month or two i pulled out an old christmas quilt top with five inch squares that i had put together a few years back and shoved in a bin and forgot about so i hung up that quilt top on my board and i kept coming in and out and looking at it i thought oh it's so boring i don't want to just put some batting in it and quilt it and put a backing on it and yada yada yada i kept thinking and thinking and thinking and i thought oh the puff quilt thing what can i do with this could this be a puff quilt i thought yeah it can i tell you all that to tell you it's been a couple months in the making back and forth thinking and practicing before i came up with this method it's really easy and it's a no-brainer and you'll think so too hopefully let me know down in the comments stay till the end and i'll let you know how many squares i used in this quilt and what the final measurements are enough talking already let's get busy channeling our puff quilt i'm going to use five inch squares just like i did in the larger quilt but i'm just going to demonstrate it on a smaller scale version of my puff quilt you're going to lay out all your squares just like you'd like to see them just like in normal quilting you're going to connect all of your squares at a quarter inch seam allowance just like you see me doing here it's just a normal quilt top just like you would sew any other quilt top you're going to connect them all together in the pattern and way that you would like to see them on your end result quilt so just like in normal quilting after you finish connecting each row you're going to iron your seam allowance to one side or the other making sure that the next row that you are going to connect to it the seam allowance is going the opposite way so that you can nest your seams together once everything is nice and pressed you're going to add your rows together you're going to nest them up just like you see me doing here and then you're going to pop a pin in each seam area so that way when we get to the sewing machine everything lines up perfectly as we sew our quarter inch seam take it to the sewing machine connect it with a quarter inch seam allowance on my larger version of my puff quilt i did press each seam to the side after i sewed it but for this tiny demonstration miniature puff quilt i just added that last row quickly at the sewing machine so i could take it over to the pressing mat and show you how i did that this pressing step is very very important this is going to help us make the pleats that we need to make for our puff quilt so that it comes out nice and even so be sure that everything is pressed nice and flat this next step is where all the magic comes into play if you can pinch a quarter inch you're golden this is so easy to do that you don't even have to press it with an iron or pin it or clip it or anything you're going to put your needle down into the ditch of that seam and you're just going to simply sew that pleat up that's it now you can stay stitching in the ditch and that's what i ended up preferring in the end or you can just simply go over each pleat as you go and sew back and forth and then clip your threads but i found that that left way too many tails for me to clip and nobody's got time for that right in the end each square that is connected on every single side will have a quarter inch pinch with it sewn down within the ditch now on the end blocks the ones that are all the way around you do have to take note that to be right in the center of those seams you do have to come down a bit toward the center of the quilt so to speak so that you get an even center of the pinch on all of the edge blocks because you have to a lot for that seam allowance that's going to be tucked in around all the bound edges so i hope that makes sense it really doesn't matter which way your pleat goes what really matters is that they're all going in the same direction so you don't get one pleat twisted one way and one the other way on a block as long as you're consistent in how much you pinch if you don't end up in the end doing a quarter inch you do like an eighth or a little more than a quarter inch you'll be fine as long as you have consistency in your pinching once you get one row of all your pinching done the next row of pinching is a lot easier because you can follow the guide from the first pinch that you did and kind of just go across the block and pinch it kind of parallel right to it and it becomes quite easy and fast after that initial pinching here i show you on a couple of blocks how i pinched and stitched in the ditch consecutively and that was the easiest i mean nobody's going to see that extra stitching in the ditch and it's a lot easier than cutting your threads and lifting out and you see here i just kept going and then i just pinched that next little bit and sewed over it and backstitched and that was it don't forget to pinch the quarter inch pleat on all the outer areas of your blocks this puff quilt the way that i constructed it is really very forgiving if you don't get the whole quarter inch or you get an eighth of an inch pinch or whatnot once you get the poly fill in there and things start puffing up you'll be fine and you know what no one will see it so this is not one of those quilts where you have to make sure that you are precision on spot so you know here i'm just showing you how i lined the outer pleat with the inner pleat so that things were sort of even i mean you don't want it to be totally out of whack right you want to be somewhere in the vicinity so that's what i'm showing you there so just continue sewing those quarter inch pinches along all of the outer blocks and when you're done clip all of your threads now so you don't have to worry about it later especially if you didn't do the continuous stitching you'll definitely want to trim those now your quilt top should look something just like this but just on a larger scale sometimes this technique can be interchanged with other names like pin tucking or ruching or pleading so whatever you want to call it you call it that i'm going to back the miniature puff quilt with the same exact minky type soft fabric that i used in the larger puff quilt you need to be careful when you pick out your backing for this project you don't want it to have any stretch now notice here in my backing there is no stretch in my really soft minky type fabric and you'll want the same i feel like if there's stretch in it there's going to be problems for you so it's best to stay away from it you'll want to cut your minky soft type fabric a little bit larger than what your quilt top ends up being you see here when i put right sides together how much bigger my minky type fabric is and that's what you want for yours too make sure the backing is laying really good and flat and take your safety pins and safety pin at each outer pleat all along the entire quilt area one thing you want to remember is not to pull on the pleats to stretch it to meet your minky you just want it to fall exactly where it needs to fall without pulling it i sure do hope that makes sense it's so hard to explain it but where you see my safety pins my pleat is laying nice and flat it's not being spread out so i hope that helps before taking it to the sewing machine turn it over and make sure nothing has been puckered on the minke as long as you laid everything flat when you pinned it there's no need to pin the middle for this step so you're going to start along one corner edge of this quilt top and minky and you're going to back stitch just before the corner and then you're going to go around the corner and sew that quarter inch seam allowance along the quilt top around the entire quilt top until you get to the other corner leaving one whole side open [Music] [Music] so you see here i'm coming up to the end of that last corner and i'm just going to pivot and just go in about an inch or so not even and just back stitch and make sure that that's solid there now it's time to trim off all of the excess minky backing and you can also trim your corners on this as well so that it comes to a really nice point one suggestion that i have for you that i didn't do on this miniature puff quilt was to leave more of the minky on the edge of the opening so i had more to tuck in at the end once all of the inside is trimmed up turn everything right side out exposing the quilt top and the minky backing be sure to push all of your corners out nice and pointy now it's time to top stitch around the entire quilt top making sure that we do leave open that opening area so we're going to stop and start just where we stopped and started when we connected everything together when it was inside out as i sewed these layers together you can see there i just pinched them so they were evenly together in layers and i went about an eighth to a quarter inch all the way around the entire quilt top one tip i can give you here is to keep that pleat pressed down with your finger just before it goes underneath your presser foot so that way the pleats don't get you know twisted and flipped up and and all that [Music] [Music] okay this bubble quill slash puff quilt it's looking pretty good this is where the fun starts you're looking at the bottom of the quilt right there and then the top of course is the opening you'll start at the bottom of the quilt and you'll sew stitching in the ditch up two blocks worth just where you see me pointing we want to connect both layers the quilt top and the soft backing you would use this same method even if you had 10 rows across it doesn't matter how many you have you would still sew up two blocks worth i tried sewing up three at a time and it's manageable but it's just not as easy so that's why i say two blocks here i'm demonstrating with my hand putting it inside of each of the channels showing you that my hand does definitely fit in there now if you have a bigger hand you may need a tool to help you squish some of that poly fill down in but i didn't seem to have too much of a problem this is the brand of polyfill that i used and i have a big box of it just like you see there in the picture and it works great now i take about as much as what's in my hand there and i put place that in each of the five inch squared areas now in the first channel you see here i'm going to shove it down and i'm going to push it farther in to the end there so that that seam that's open right there in the channel area there's no polyfill in that area and that's key to helping us sew a nice straight line in that ditch here in a minute so then i'm going to grab another bit of my polyfill as big as my hand there and i'm going to shove it down into the next channel and again i'm just going to push it as far to the edge as i possibly can keeping it away from that seam area right there and then i'm going to do that to the next one now if you had 10 rows of these you would fill all 10 of them up and push them all to the edge here i'm checking to see if i have enough polyfill in each little square and that last one the one on the right it needed just a little bit more and then i'm going to just shove it in there and push it all the way to the end now i just need to make sure that that seam area across now in front of all of those polyfills is cleared so that way i'm going to take it to the sewing machine and then i'm going to stitch in the ditch all across there i want you to notice as i'm sewing that my puffs were all to the left side of my needle and that happened to me through the entire project i never once had any bulk within the arm area toward my sewing machine so i just went that same way with that same seam every time and it didn't skew my seams at all my project came out perfectly so remember when we sewed up those blocks we sewed up two blocks so we can now stuff more into our next set of blocks you will just continually repeat the same step over and over filling all of those areas right in front of where you just sewed so we're going to stuff these and then just like before we're going to sew in the ditch right across and you can see i'm doing that here if i wasn't working on this miniature quilt my next step would be to sew up two more blocks going toward the top of the quilt the part that's open but since it's my smaller miniature i'm going to show you how to close it here's a picture of the back of my big quilt part way through the stuffing part of it and look at how cool it looks you see how half the quilt is not puffed up because that is the opening part where i was shoving all of my puffiness down in through to the channel so let's get to closing this puffy quill up so i'm going to sew those seams stitching in the ditch right there where i'm pointing but when i get to the edge i'm going to leave about an inch or more right at the very end of it so that way i'll be able to turn my seam allowance under and in and sew it close take note that whenever i was sewing toward the opening area i was making the channels by stitching in the ditch initially my puffs were always behind my sewing machine again very little bulk in the arm area toward my machine this was a very comfortable quilt to make finish up stuffing the rest of your squares right there on the edge and then we're going to turn our seam allowance in and use some wonder clips to clip everything nice and in place and then we'll take it to the sewing machine to sew everything closed you'll want to use quite a few clips just to make sure that everything is nicely closed and then you'll take it to your sewing machine and sew that eighth to a quarter inch top stitch the rest of the way around your puffy quilt to close everything up one of my favorite things about this method for the puffy quilt was that you could take your five inch fabric squares and place them anywhere you'd like and you know exactly where you want them to end up by the way that you would place them you could definitely do the ombre puffy quilt and all the different patterns that are out there oh my word look at my little miniature puffy quilt pillow i guess is what it is maybe my grandbaby will like this as a pillow it's super soft and super squishy and super cute but this is the real star of the show right here this beautiful puffy quilt it's more like a baby quilt in size really it turned out so good i'm so glad that i ended up pulling this out of my stash and turning it into a puffy quilt i mean hey you might have a quilt top just laying around in your stash too you can make a puffy quilt with it just like i did so for this puffy baby quilt i ended up using 125 inch squares but you know what you could easily double and triple these squares and make a really big quilt it's that easy to do oh yeah i think this is going to be my granddaughter's very first christmas puffy quilt what do you think it's super darling oh my word [Music] until next time on the sewing channel take care

Channel: The Sewing Channel

Views: 171,080

Keywords: how to make a puff quilt, how to make a puff quilt for baby, how to make a bubble puff quilt, easy puff quilt, make bubble quilt, puffer quilt, the sewing channel, the sewing channel youtube, puff quilt for beginners, puff quilt sewing tutorial, biscuit quilt, puff quilt tutorial, how to make a puff quilt with sewing machine, make puff quilt out of quilt top, puffy quilt, puff quilt, puff quilt easy way, puff quilt the easy way, the sewing channel puff quilt, fast puff quilt

Id: NIVA1u4ua3w

Length: 21min 43sec (1303 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021