THIS POST UPDATED HERE.

To Pouf or not to Pouf?  That is the question.  I recently discovered poufs through Pinterest (Yes, I know I’m way late to the game on this one) and fell in love.  I knew immediately that something like this would work perfectly for my daughter.  She is always playing on the floor and would love to have something to plop down onto instead of the laminate floor.

Here are a few of my favorites…

and

and

PS – All these have links to the original author.

My only concern was that  something along these lines would be too stiff and not allow her to comfortably play on the floor while sitting on it.  Which then made me think about going more in the bean bag direction.  But, I no likey bean bags much.  I’ve just never cared much for the blob shape or the noise they make when you sit on them.

So after giving it some thought I decided to attempt a merger and see what would happen.  Considering this was an experiment and being a little on the cheap side,  I went with fabric already on hand.  Which turned out to be a few yards of a super soft, panne velvet in light blue and grey and some funky, Egyptian themed cotton fabric (both previously my mothers and used as packing material on our move up to CO).

The size of my finished pouf/bean bag was going to be 23″ x 13″.   So my two large squares were cut at 24″ and the two long rectangles at 24″ x 14″.  Because the panne is a thinner fabric, the cotton print was used to create a lining for the pouf/bean bag.

The pouf/bean bag after all the sides had been sewn to the top and bottom.  The panne velvet is stretchy so it required more time and patience to put together than the lining bag.  I left generous openings along one side of each bag.  These will be necessary to insert the lining into the main bag and also for adding the stuffing.

It is difficult to tell from the picture, but the lining was inserted into the main bag prior to stuffing.  I was worried it would be difficult to squeeze the lining bag into the main bag once it was stuffed full.

To create a more squishy, beanie type of bag I went with shredded foam instead of batting.  The bags are about $5 a piece at JoAnn’s, but I went during one of the coupon commotion weekends and was able to get 6 bags for between $2 to $2.50/ea.  Why 6 bags?  I used some calculator online to figure the cubic feet and it came back with 4.33 for my pouf/bean bag and the foam bags were approx .75 cubic feet each.  Which translated into a language I understand means that should be plenty.

There are no pictures of the actual stuffing process as it was way too difficult to handle the camera and stuff at the same time.  The static electricity was a big pain in the you know what, so I did have quite the foam party going on the floor, my clothes, the table and anywhere else it could stick before I was done.

The finished pouf or bean bag.  You be the judge.

The softer foam stuffing and stretchy fabric helped soften the square shape, but it isn’t lost entirely.  And, most importantly, my daughter thinks it is great.  She loves the colors (happy accident), the softness of the fabric and the squishy-ness of it.  This poor thing has been dragged up and down the stairs numerous times, jumped on (from the stairs) and sat on in every possible configuration without really losing it’s shape.  When it starts to get really wonky,  I just give it a few good shakes and that seems to be enough to get it back into proper shape.

My very happy customer.