RufflePuff Madness!

Probably not …. at least not for a long time.

My latest puff has me a little excited.

Isn’t she pretty?  All ruffles and loveliness!  I daresay there will be sisters of hers scattered across the quilt in various incarnations.  This particular one is a 4ply ruffle on a 4ply puff.  I am going to experiment with a laceweight ruffle on a 4ply puff too.

While I like the idea of the BeeKeeper Quilt as is, just having a few hexapuffs through it that have different textures appeals to me greatly.

I do plan on using duplicate stitch and regular embroidery as well.  I do want to be mindful of not putting TOO much on so that the picture of the quilt as a whole will be overshadowed by the ‘bits’, though.

Making the rufflepuff wasn’t hard, but just fiddly. I’ve put together a little phototutorial, just in case you want to add one or a million to your own quilt.

RufflePuff

The first thing you’ll need to do is add some ribbing to your puff.  You could add as few as one, and as many as 10 (if you’re really keen).  Given how much real estate it takes up, I found 4 a good number.  This is easier if you don’t stuff and bind off first.  I found that I ended up messing up the stuffing when I completed the puff before adding the ruffle.

Next you need to pick up stitches. You only need to pick up every other row, which will end up being 9 stitches.

It doesn’t really matter where you start, the subsequent ones will always be a bit more fiddly than the first one.

Using your ruffle yarn, which could be the same as your puff, or a laceweight to make it a little more delicate, knit into the picked up stitches, through the front so that it crosses the stitch and closes the gap a little.

From there it’s knit in garter stitch increasing every other row as follows.

 

*K1, KFB* until last stitch, K1
Knit row
K1, Kfb to last stitch, K1
Knit row
K1, KFB to last stitch, K1
Bind off all stitches.

Repeat for the rest of your purl strips.

Sew in ends of ruffles, stuff (if you’re stuffing), bind off puff and squish away!