If you follow me on Instagram you’l know that I recently made this puzzle quilt from super soft plush fabric. The moment I saw Polly’s quilt shared by Shannon Fabrics I swooned and instantly fell in love. It’s a rainbow! It’s a jigsaw! It’s super soft and fluffy! These are all things that appeal greatly to Mrs Plush and I just had to give it a try.

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It’s an absolutely ingenious design. Initially I thought it was beyond my capabilities – I mean how the hell do you sew those curves? Well the answer is – you don’t. They are appliquéd on. Awesome.

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I followed Polly’s tutorial which she put together as part of Shannon’s Great Cuddle Cake Challenge.  It takes two packs of Shannon Cuddle Cakes and, in a nutshell, you cut out the “knobbies”, appliqué them on to adjacent squares and then stitch in to rows, then the rows together. It really is pretty simple. (Please note my mahoosive SuperBoard in the above photo which was invaluable in laying the squares on to, this board is super handy for dressmaking too, especially if you are rubbing off your own clothes to make patterns.)

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Lots of Bondaweb knobbies

There’s not much to add to the original tutorial, I followed it pretty much to the letter except I didn’t use any wadding (batting) because I thought two layers of plush would be enough, and I really like the result. It’s a lovely, flexible and soft quilt.  I trimmed back the “knobbies” in the seams once the top was sewn as it was pretty bulky in places. I’ve never quilted two layers of plush before and I thought I’d be a good quilty girl and start from the centre of the quilt each time to help with any travelling. I can’t say that this worked that well for me and I did get a bit of bunching in a couple of places and it seemed to work better just quilting form edge to edge which is what I ended up doing for the lion’s share.

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Appliqué of the “knobbies”

 

I thought it might be handy to have a list of the thread colours I used to match the Very Vibrant Cuddle Cake pack that I used as the thread is visible on the top

I used Gutermann Sew All Thread colours 372, 733, 156, 392, 350, 852, 336, 833, 197, 311.

I backed my quilt with Embossed Chevron Red Cuddle and I used Dark Lime Cuddle for my binding.

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If you fancy having a go at this we’ve put together this bundle which contains two packs of cuddle cakes, 10 co-ordinating threads and a pack of Bondaweb which will save you £4.40 than if you bought everything separately PLUS we’re chucking in a free hessian bag. Don’t say we don’t look after you.

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Fancy having a bash at Polly’s Cuddle Puzzle Quilt yourself?