Beyond Buttons: Quilted Pillow Tutorial

From: Feelin' Feminine

January 12, 2012

One of my biggest problems with sewing is after finishing up a project, I am left with many scraps that I continue to store away until my scrap bin is full. Today’s project, a quilted pillow, is perfect for using up those scraps. I personally was loving this floral fabric so I only used that and a matching blue fabric to make my pillow, but you can make it to match your room, or make it with multiple colors to give to a family member or friend.

Start off with a square template that is the size you would like, I used a post it note. Then you can cut out each square individually, but to save time, I folded the fabric multiple times, pinned the paper down and cut them out. Cut as many as you think will make up the size of pillow you want, I used 16 squares.

After having all your squares cut, lay them out in the pattern you’d like .

Then to start take 2 pieces, match them up with their right sides together touching and sew them on one side. To that piece, continue sewing your pieces until you get to the end of that row.

You should now have strips like these!

Now take 2 strips, and we are going to use the method used above. Taking them right sides together, match them up and sew the long sides. Make sure the lines match up or else it will look crooked! Do that to the other two strips and sew them together. Now you will have two chunky strips and you will once again sew those together right sides touching.

Due to the fabric that I used ( the floral one is a stretchy cotton like fabric) , you can see that in some place, the lines were not matched up well and as a result it looks a bit crooked. Using an iron, press the seams down and this is what it should look like up to this point.

Take another piece of fabric as big as your quilted piece. This will be your backside of the pillow. Lay itright sides touching to the quilted piece and if needed trim the edges a bit so it is a nice square. Sew all the way around, but leave an opening to stuff the filling in, it does not need to be very big.

Now, turn it right side out, stuff most of the filling in and slip stitch. If you do not know how to here is a good tutorial explaining it. Right before finishing up, stuff the rest of the filling in and carefully adjust it to fill all the corners. Finish up and knot the end.

And we are done! You just made a….

Hope the instructions were clear, if you have any questions please leave me a comment and I will try to help as best I can!

In Messiah,

-Rosi