A dear friend of mine is a wonderful burlesque performer and she asked me to make some powderpuffs for her for a new routine she recently created and I wanted to share with you how I did it.
We chose the cushion pads online (18″) and some amazing sherpa fleece fabric from a local fabric shop.
Because this is my first tutorial the photos are very sparse and almost irrelevant., I’m sorry. You’ll just have to forgive me and use your imagination a little for this one!
Step one – The cushion pads had a small gusset seam around the edges so I took a measurement from the centre of the cushion to the centre line of the gusset. Next I took some tracing paper and taking a square a little bigger than I needed, I drew a threaded needle up through the centre of the paper.
I marked the diameter of the cushion (half the width of the circle) on the thread and used that to draw myself a circle, marking the paper as I went with my chalk. NOTE – I included a 1″ seam allowance on my measurement.
As I was making a pair, I cut 4 of these circles and laid them in pairs, wrong side together.
Step 2 – Because these aren’t cushions, I chose not to put a zip on the covers and simply stitch them shut so after pinning the pieces and checking how big the opening had to be I sewed the pieces wrong side together.
*When you’re sewing thick fleece like this fabric you need to reduce the pressure on the foot and also the stitch tension – it’s a good idea to do a few careful test runs first. I reduced the tension a lot and used a zig zag stitch.
After I’d sewed the pieces I nicked the seams to allow the fabric to curve without big lumps of fabric ruining the seam.
Step three – I rolled the cushion pad up to fit it into the opening left on the covers, turned the covers right side out and watched my powderpuff take shape! Then I handstitched the opening – remembering to keep the curve of the cushion!! (in the second one anyway….)
Step four – Admire the beautiful softness!!
I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at a tutorial, next time I’ll remember to take photos!
I’ll leave you with one more picture: Ginger Rogers performing her powderpuff piece
