Naturally I feel compelled to craft new things, especially since March is National Craft Month. This year’s spring trends, as I learned from Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores, have nautical, geometric, floral, and radiant orchid (Pantone Color of the Year) elements. And to make spring crafting easy during National Craft Month, Jo-Ann offers a $5 off $25 or more purchase coupon and a spring crafting inspiration website.
After some much needed spring cleaning and organizing in my daughter’s room, it was decided she lacked seating. She told me she wanted a pouf. Since we have something of a woodlands theme going in her room, and because it’s her favorite color, we looked for mostly green in the home décor fabric aisles at Jo-Ann. We found some lovely floral and geometric patterned fabric and paired that with a beautiful solid green.
A pouf, or a large floor pillow, is really easy to put together. For a 14” square pouf, which is bigger than you think, this is what you’ll need:
Sew the zipper in your panel, following this fabulous tutorial on Design Sponge. I use it every time and could not do a better job showing you how to do it. Upon finishing your zipper panel, you will have six 15” squares.
I chose to alternate my fabric prints and have the solid green panels as the top and bottom of my pouf. After I created the zipper panel, I pinned and sewed two print panels together, right sides facing. Repeat with the other panels and then sew them all together.
Once all the side panels were sewn into a big square tube, I sewed in the top, followed by the bottom.
The corners are a bit tricky but if you go nice and slow, you should end up with a beautiful and consistent 1/2” seam.
When you sew the bottom, remember to open the zipper slightly or, if you don’t use a zipper and plan to close the pouf by hand, leave a large enough opening for turning the fabric and stuffing the pouf.
Trim your threads, iron your seams and turn your pouf inside out. Stuff it with whatever you have available, I used an old king size duvet. It’s amazing how much stuffing a 14” pouf takes. Like I said, it’s bigger than you think.
That’s all there is to it. I am very happy with my spring pouf and I am sure Lola will love it as well. The girl is so easy to please.
If you too would like to craft your way into spring, be sure to take a look at the Jo-Ann inspiration website. And don’t forget the coupon!
This post is sponsored by Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores as part of the National Craft Month campaign. I received a gift card to purchase materials and write this post. The opinions are my own.
I have a pile of vintage and not so vintage blankets in my house.
Some are in boxes in my craft room, others in my bedroom closet.
There are baby blankets, army blankets, striped blankets, and reversible blankets.
Blankets in pink, blue, green, brown, yellow, and white.
Fabric to line bags with, and bag pockets.
The pile of blankets has shrunk somewhat.
In its place is a growing pile of messenger bags.
You can find them in my Etsy shop.
My Kindle Fire passed away. While it was not an unexpected passing, it was a very sad moment for me because I used it daily. For some time it had had trouble charging. Unfortunately the problem was not with the charger, that would have been an easy fix. No, it was the charger receiver thingy. For a while I was able to wiggle a charge, but at some point last month that stopped working, too.
I called Amazon Kindle Support, lovely people by the way, but they could not help me and time of death was quickly called. Since my Kindle was two years old, it was no longer under any sort of warranty but the good folks at Amazon made me a rather generous replacement offer. After waiting to see if Santa had anything up his sleeve – alas, he didn’t, I took them up on their offer this weekend.
My first Kindle Fire had a 7” screen. To protect it, I created a sturdy felt owl cover for it. It was made with 3 mm thick gray and white wool felt and a pair of black buttons for its eyes.
My new Kindle is the bigger 8.9” screen version and the owl no longer fits. Time for something new. While I loved my owl, I wanted something a little snazzier for my new cover.
Felt will always be my first love, especially thick wool felt, but I am on a self proclaimed craft materials purchasing stop and wanted to use what I had on hand for my prototype. I also wanted to try and incorporate elastic in my design.
I share a love of maps with my mother-in-law and when she wanted to get rid of an old Rand McNally road atlas, I was happy to take it off her hands. Since this first cover was an experiment, I did not want to use the map of Wisconsin, my current home state. I intended to save that one for the real thing. Instead I used Washington State, my previous home state, for the outside.
I fused the paper map to the wool felt lining, couldn’t forgo on felt entirely, with Heat ‘n Bond Lite (the kind you can sew through) and finished it off with Pellon’s Vinyl-Fuse to make it water repellant. Then I attached the elastic and sewed the two pieces together.
All that’s left is wait for the Kindle to arrive and see if it fits. What do you think?
