Rainbow Puff Caterpillar

I love everything rainbow, I love sewing, and I love soft fluffy stuff! Most of all I love to create!

For this instructables I will be teaching you how to make a plush rainbow puff caterpillar. I used what is known as a puff quilting technique that is ordinarily used for making a cute puffy quilt. However, with imagination anything can happen!

Let's create!

TOOLS

- Sewing machine
- Fabric scissors
- Rotary cutting blade
- Fabric cutting ruler
- Cutting mat
- Fabric pins
- Sewing needle

MATERIALS

- 8 different patterned quilting fabrics
- White muslin
- Black felt
- Minky or similar stretchy fluffy fabric
- Ribbon for legs
- Ribbon for antennas
- Polyfil
- White sewing thread

First use your rotary blade, ruler, and cutting mat to cut your 8 colors into 5 1/2 " × 5 1/2 " squares.

Then cut your muslin into eight 8 " x 4 " squares.

Make sure all of your fabric is properly preshrunk and ironed before cutting to ensure you cut the square the correct dimensions.

1. Cut out about two quarter size eyes from your black felt.

2. Cut two 4 " ribbons for the antennas.

3. Tie 5 knots in the end of each ribbon to make one big knot.

4. Pin your eyes and antennas to the fabric square you have chosen for your caterpillar head. I chose a fun colorful polka dot fabric. Position the eyes about 1/3 of the way from the bottom, and the antennas a little higher than midway (as shown in photo). However, it's not rocket science so put your eyes and antennas where ever you feel they look best!

5. After your antenna and eyes are pinned, use the sewing machine to first sew the ends of the antennas about 1/2 " making sure to backstitch several times.

6. Then sew around your eyeballs, sewing around each eyeball twice and back stitching to finish.

7. Snip all hanging threads and sit back and admire your work!

1. Begin by taking one of your muslin squares and one of your rainbow squares and lining two corners wrong sides together or right sides out.

2. Start sewing squares from the joined corner with a 1/4" seam allowance.

3. Once you sew down 1/3 of the large square stop sewing, leave your needle down, lift the presser foot, and align the bottom corner of the top square with the bottom square. By doing this you will create a pleat about midway on the square.

4. Fold the top square pleat over and flush with the bottom square. Lower the presser foot and sew to the bottom corner with a 1/4" seam allowance.

5. Leave the needle down, lift the press foot, and pivot the square. Lower the presser foot and repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have sewn 3 sides leaving one side open.

6. Remove from sewing machine, snip hanging threads. Stuff your puff with some soft squishy polyfil. Don't stuff too much, you want to loosely stuff it but enough to be puffy. This will make it easy to sew shut.

7. Once your puff is stuffed, gently push the puffi ess out off the way and pin the open side near the stuffing. Align the fabric with a pleat in the center and pin.

8. Sew the open side with a 1/4" seam allowance making sure to back stitch at the beginning and end.

9. Snip hanging thread and gently squish the stuffing evenly throughout the puff.

10. Squish it and hug it and rub it softly on your face and tell it that you love it!

11. Follow the same steps for the remaining 7 puffs, make sure you don't sew over your antennas on your head puff.

Sewing your puffs together can be tricky. This is where you need to use your puff squishing super powers.

1. Take two puffs and face them right sides together.

2. Try to push as much stuffing out of the way as possible and align the edges of the puff, pinning the edges so they stay put.

3. Place your puffs at the sewing machine. Try and position the neddle a little bit on the inner edge of your original seam so the original seam wont show after sewing the puffs together.

4. Now use your puff squishing powers to hold both puffs down while sewing them together. Back stitch at the beginnin and end. Snip hanging threads.

5. Continue to sew the rest of the puffs to the others in a line until they are all sewn together.

It should start to look more like a caterpillar.

1. Cut your ribbon for your legs. Cut 14 5" ribbons.

2. Fold each ribbon in half and pin to the top side of the middle of each puff.

3. Sew each ribbon making sure to back stitch several times.

4. Snip hanging threads and admire your caterpillar coming together.

1. Grab your fuzzy fabric and ruler. Gently stretch your caterpillar until the fabric is taught. Measure the length of the caterpillar. Mine measured 24 ".

2. Cut out your fuzzy fabric. Add 2 " to the length of the caterpillar and 1" to the width. And make that measurement the cut for your fuzzy fabric.
I cut out a 26" x 4 1/2" sheet.

3. Pin your fuzzy fabric and your caterpillar right sides together. Make sure your legs are tucked in tight.

4. Sew together from bottom side of caterpillar making sure that your seam is on the inside of your origional puff seams.

5. Only sew 3 edges leaving the face edge open. Sew the 3 edges twice and snip hanging threads.

6. Very gently turn the caterpillar right side out. This is kinda fun because it looks like it's trying to eat itself!

7. Make sure all your puffs and legs are turned rightside out, then fold the head puff and fuzzy fabric inward and hand sew shut.

8. You may also choose to fold the antennas over and hand sew them so they stick up.

Hug it, squeeze it, play with it!

Give it to a baby, child, your mom, sister, wife, girl friend, or dog!

Just have fun!

I hope you enjoyed my instructable and please let me know what you think and if you tried making a cute puff caterpillar.