Here’s a real throwback. This is the Amy Butler Honeybun Pouf (available here but you’ll need to scroll down the page). You may notice that it looks only partially filled and that’s because it is. It was created to fill with with scraps. You know all the those off cuts from making clothes? Or from fussy cutting quilt fabric? Well, I know you don’t want to throw it out and neither do I. But when it’s too small to do anything real with, the next best option is to use it as stuffing. Here’s what I fit into mine and that’s only partially full:
The pattern itself is fairly straightforward and nicely written as all of Amy Butler’s patterns are (if you haven’t tried one, I highly recommend them). It involves a lot of triangle/wedge pieces which get sewn together to make bigger wedges until you finally have a circle. There are two sizes in the pattern and this is the larger one.
Well, two circles.
It’s nice to topstitch the wedges both for decorative reasons and for strength. Each wedge is lined with batting so it’s also a great way to use up all those weird long scraps of batting you get when you trim your quilts. I just sprayed basting spray on it and then laid the fabric on top and cut out based on the already cut fabric wedge. Super fast!
The outer fabric is some fake polyester dupioni looking stuff that I had gotten at Joann’s ages ago for a completely different project. I had less of the fabric with the flowers so I mostly used that on top. The button is a giant fabric covered button that I centered one of the flowers on. There is a zipper in the side which allows you to keep adding stuffing/scraps and I offset mine so I didn’t have to worry about matching for artistic reasons.
Above is a photo of when it was more full. It served as a lovely seat for many years, but unfortunately had an unrecoverable run in with a dog accident and had to be disposed of. I look forward to making another eventually as it’s a great stash buster, but I’ll definitely use some stronger (and washable) fabric for the outside. The fake dupioni I used was a bit on the thin side and started to split and show the batting through in places. But definitely a pattern I’d use again!
