Have fun with your new project. Yes...........I've done a puff quilt and it was the first one I did when I took up quilting in earnest. That's been about eight years ago now and it's on a bed as wee speak and has had a lot of use. I had a picture of it on the puter, but had a crash and a backup of it is on a disc or flash drive somewhere and I checked photobucket and I guess never put it there.

This is the only quilt for which I ever bought a pattern and being my first, followed it to a T. The puff section is joined to my quilt back by knots, tied over the intersections where each pillow joins the other. Since the padding (batting) is enclosed in each little pillow, you'll find those sections where you must knot won't have any batting in them, thank God, because you'd be knotting through all layers of fabric of the seams, plus your backing. I used cotton knitting yarn and liked the effect very much, but if you aren't using the knots as part of the design, you could just do some stitches on the machine at those intersections.
It's laundered well, and the knots are adequate to keep the backing and quilt top aligned. Kudos to you for exploring other than the currently popular methods of quilting. I wanted to taste those options too and why I did wool quilts last winter.

Years ago (40+) my grandmother made this quilt for me. It is a "puff" quilt. She made handmade each square which are approximately 1-1/2" square finished size. She then used an embroidery floss and hand stitched the squares together with a feather stitch. She only tied each square in the middle with yarn to hold the batting. Needless to say, after many years of washing and use, the batting is bunched up around the yarn. I have had to replace several squares that the fabric is falling apart. I have used wonder under to attach the batting to the fabric as well as a fine stitch around each square to secure the batting.

If I were to do this again, starting from scratch, I would probably machine stitch the squares together using a feather stitch that overlaps enough to also hold the batting, as well as tying the centers of the squares.

As you can see, she made the outside square all the way around using the same color squares, so it looks like a border.
My stitches will never be as good as hers, and the colors are DEFINITELY 1970s, but I still love this quilt and use it all the time!

Good luck with yours and let us know how you are coming.
Sue

Sue, I love how this puff quilt looks. It looks so soft and loving. TFS

I made a ball using the biscuit squares and it seems like when I stuffed the very center, I put a bell in it.....or was thinking about doing that. I truly cannot remember if I ever finished it but can remember where the bag used to hang that it was in waiting to be finished. It's probably stuffed in the bottom of one of the cabinets........sigh. Now I'm going to have to look for it.....tomorrow. :-)

SharonG/FL

I have a quilt like that--mine has green "biscuits" for the border too. It was made by my husbands grandma. I was told that she used to stuff those quilts with old stockings. It looks like it was sewn together by hand. Some parts with cotton thread and other some type of stiff nylon or plastic thread.
Red embroidery thread for tying.
I wish I know what year she made it.