Yesterday I had the good fortune to take a class on tuffet making, and this is the result! I took the class at Quilting Squares Quilt Shop in Franklin, TN. The owner of the shop went and got 'tuffet-certified' from the makers of the pattern Tuffet Source, and sells their pattern and supplies. It's an ingenious project, that uses iron-on interfacing that has the pattern printed onto it, for you to stitch to, much like the paper used in paper-piecing quilt blocks. You can purchase the pattern & kits from their website, with the foam, batting, board, feet, etc., at different levels of finished for different prices. (Ie, if you want to do some extra manhandling of the materials, you can get them a bit cheaper, or if you want to skip part of the mess and fuss, you can get a more finished version of the kit.)
Funny story: When I called to sign up for the class, I was told that it was a 2-part class (5 hours each) and that I had already missed part 1. I said thanks, and that I'd look forward to it being taught again. An hour later they called back to say that if I was willing to make version 2, (which had fewer pieces in it), and if I cut my rectangular strips at home over the weekend, I could probably catch up to the rest of my classmates who had started the week before. And that doing so, would save me $50, because they wouldn't charge me for the lesson that I missed.
So I picked out some fabric and headed to class yesterday. Most of the students had their entire fabric cover completed, but needed to assemble the actual tuffet. I started my project at 10:00 am, and everyone else had finished by 12:30, leaving me alone with the instructor, in a class that was supposed to run until 3:00pm. She had to put together a new tuffet of her own anyways, so she told me to stay as long as I wanted. Not having to wait for the iron, and having less wedges to stitch meant that I flew through! I did make one mistake that necessitated me going home for my extra scrap fabric, but all told I worked from 10:00-4:00, with a 40 minute run home. Not bad for heading home with a finished piece of furniture!
The large wedges are a Tim Holtz fabric called [url=http://www.joann.com/tim-holtz-premium-cotton-fabric-transportation-tickets/15175524.html#q=tim+holt&prefn1=prod_type&prefv1=Product&start=16]Transportation Tickets[/url] from Joann's. The red and black are generic fabrics from their wall. For bottom, I used a Tim Holtz's Game Pieces in taupe, that came as part of a 12" set of his assorted fabric designs that I found in the clearance section of Joann's on the same trip. I think I'm going to use the other prints from it to make a coordinating quilt for the back of the couch.
After stapling on the cover & the contrast fabric to cover bottom, I hid the raw edges with black braid. (Forgot to get a pic of that step!) And here it is finished, and set beside the fireplace. (Don't worry, I plan to move it in the event we ever need to light a fire here in TN!) I had a great deal of fun putting it together, and was amused at the teacher, who said she shouldn't bother charging me a class fee, because she didn't need to teach me how to sew, unlike the other students. Guess all those years of costuming and corsetry were perfect for making tiny, fiddly, curvy seams! :D
Note: Version #1 uses all wedges the width of the black on my tuffet. In mine the red covers 2 wedge spaces, and the print covers 4, so it comes to 64 wedges if you do that version. There were some really stunning versions done that way in class, but I kinda like #2, because you can see the detail on more of the prints.
