I Made a Pouf!

I have gotten behind in my sewing projects lately, mostly because I don't have a good place to work yet. When the house is done I will but that'll still take a bit. However, this doesn't stop me from wanting to make things. Yesterday, David and I were commenting to each other how nice it would be to have an ottoman in the living room. We decided to look up how to make one yourself because these can get surprisingly pricey! We found a very nice tutorial but we don't always know what they're talking about so we decided to enlist in his mom's help (she sews and quilts and does projects all the time---she even gets her own room at their house for it!). So we gathered our supplies (mostly from Walmart since we are SO lucky our Walmart has fabric considering the closest Jo-Ann Fabric store is 30 miles away) and headed over. When his mom saw how easy it was to make these, we helped her make one too (we had a nice assembly line going).

This is the link we used. http://www.bhg.com/decorating/do-it-yourself/accents/make-a-pretty-pouf/print/?printAll=true&currentSlide=1

We did change things a little bit.

• We didn't use burlap. We used a (giraffe printed) canvas fabric instead. It also happened to be 54 inches wide so that worked out well. Because of this, you don't need the bed sheet under it. 
• We didn't do the fancy decorate stitching on the outside. It's completely optional and I think ours looks great without it. If we change our minds in the future, it's really easy to add later.
• Our stuffing consisted of thick foam that we had made to match the side sections, a pillow that pushed those out to the sides, bed sheets (I think we used 4) stuffed down the middle of the pillow, another piece of foam on top of that, and a bag of fiberfill. Basically, you want something to help shape the outside. When we had tried to put other things there and just cram it all in, it got too lumpy. We just happened to have the foam on hand so that worked well. Plus, it was heavier so it helped give some weight to the pouf.
• In the second step, they have you cut the patterns out of your fabric one by one with a scissors. You could pretty easily fold it several times and use a rotary cutter instead (we originally had it so all 8 pieces came out with one cutting but the cutter cut dull quick and we had to use really heavy duty scissors instead. If you don't have those, maybe only do four at a time). 

This whole thing only took a few hours, although we were working together. I think it's totally worth the time.

Update: a picture!