A nursery...pouf!

I've been working on a lot of nursery projects lately. Awhile back, I had ordered a bunch of fabric samples and thought I'd chosen a favorite. And then, when we'd moved into the house and painted the walls, I lined up all of the swatches we had and Steve and I both immediately chose Jessica Jones' Tulip.

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It perfectly pulls together the colors we want: yellow, gray and blue and I would (personally) put a girl or a boy in the room with this fabric. Normally $16/yard, I found it around Christmas on sale for around $9/yard, so I quickly bought 6 yards so we'd have plenty on hand for curtains, crib skirt, etc.

One project I've had in mind, especially since we bought our rocker, was making a "pouf" to rest our feet on while sitting in the rocker. I had come across this tutorial and it seemed simple enough for me to tackle in an afternoon (and it was!).

I used the measurements the blogger provided to create my pattern. I opted to do the "small pouf" as it seemed like it would fit our space better. I taped a bunch of computer paper together to make the pattern, but in retrospect I realized wax paper or parchment paper would probably have been much easier.


I cut out 8 diamonds of fabric - 4 in the tulip fabric and 4 in a lightweight turquoise corduroy that I had leftover from another project (which happens to work perfectly in the nursery!).

Following the instructions, I sewed down one of the ends of each diamond about 3 inches (note: I messed up my very first one! The end you sew down is actually the top of the pouf, so I should have sewed the other end so the tulip was right side up...something to pay attention to depending on the pattern you're working with).


I then sewed together pairs of tulip and corduroy so that I had 4 pairs.


I think sewed together pairs so that I had 2 groups of 4 panels.


After that, I sewed together the 2 sets so that I had the complete pouf and flipped it inside out.

I had picked up this big box of stuffing and used almost all of it to stuff the pouf. The instructions also say you can use rags/fabric scraps as stuffing as well.


I stuffed my pouf nice and full, making sure I filled out the shape evenly and didn't have any lumpy sides.


I cut an 8-inch octagon out of the tulip fabric, finished the edges, and then hand sewed it onto the top of the pouf.

And...ta-da! The pouf works perfectly with the rocker.


I was able to kick back, put my feet up and relax after all of my hard work!


This was such a fun project that only took a few hours from start to finish and all-in-all only cost around $30 for fabric and stuffing (I probably way overpaid for stuffing since I purchased it on Amazon rather than going to the craft store).