A Beginner Friendly Quilted Pillow Top

It is Christmas in August here. My husband and I just finished up a crazy busy week and weekend. It was exciting but quite busy. We lead the orchestra at our church, and this last weekend was our Christmas show’s kick-off. What does that mean? We spend all week preparing music for our church’s forty-five person orchestra. Every December, our church hosts a wonderful worship celebration for Christmas. My husband and I have the privilege of being a big part in that service. And, the preparation for that service starts NOW…the last weekend in August. 🙂

Since we spent all evening, every evening last week getting prepared for our Christmas kick-off, I am thankful for two little boys who napped at the same time last week. I was able to get a few projects finished up. One project being this cute little quilted pillow cover.

I have lots and lots of scraps to use up from this quilt. I thought a nice coordinating pillow would be good to add to the bed. This project is a GREAT scrap buster. The small squares are only two inches. So, yes, it’s great for scraps.

Here’s the finished product. The pillow top is made of three different sizes of squares:

2 inch squares
3 1/2 inch squares
6 1/4 inch squares

A tutorial for a simple patchwork pillow cover:

1. Find a variety of your favorite scraps and cut them into two inch strips for the small squares.

You can see I used lots of white. I paired each printed square with a white square. Don’t feel like you have to use white or pair up your square symmetrically. Since this is a great project for using scraps, use what you already have on hand. If you don’t have white, don’t use white. 🙂

2. Sew your two inch strips into pairs.

3. With your two inch strips sewn together, cut them again into two inch pairs.

Now you should be able to arrange your blocks as below.

4. Sew the two inch pairs to make a square with four two inch blocks. You can also see below that I split my seams with I ironed them. Whenever I use white fabric in a project, I always split the seams when I iron them. This way I never have concern for the darker fabric showing through the white fabric.

Your first square is complete. This square should measure 3 1/2 inches square (or at least approximately). Maybe you are like me and your precision leaves a bit to be desired.

5. Next up, we are going to cut  3 1/2 inch blocks. Start  by cutting 3 1/2 inch strips of your fabric.

6. Cut your 3 1/2 inch strips into 3 1/2 inch blocks. You will need six blocks total.

You should be able to arrange your squares as below now.

7. Sew your 3 1/2 inch squares together with your 2 inch square blocks. You should now have a 6 1/4 inch block similar to the below picture.

Below are all three of the squares sewn together for my pillow cover.

8. The last block we need is a solid 6 1/4 inch block. This pillow was a big scrap buster for me. The final block can be any solid fabric, but since I had so many white fabric scraps, I pieced my final blocks together.

Is anyone else this particular about using every single last piece of usable fabric?

The block below on the right is my finished 6 1/4 inch block. The ruler I use is great for 6 inch squares or 6 1/2 inch squares, but it doesn’t have a line for 6 1/4 inch squares. To solve this problem, I cut the squares down to 6 1/2 inch squares and then cut another 1/4 inch off. It was a pretty easy solution.

Three solid 6 1/4 inch squares and three pieced 6 /14 inch squares.

9. Sew those blocks together.

You could stop here. You have a beautiful patchwork pillow cover. I decided to add some batting to the back of my patchwork. Two reasons. 1) I was covering a blue pillow. I didn’t want the blue to show through my white fabric. By adding a layer of batting, I knew I wouldn’t have that problem. 2) I wanted to do some simple straight line quilting. I like the look of the quilting better when there is batting behind it.

10. Cut a small piece of batting to fit behind your pillow top (yes, I pieced strips of batting together). I told you…this was a big scrap buster for me.

11. Make sure your batting is flat. Smooth out your pillow top on top of your batting, and pin your pillow top to your batting.

12. I quilted my pillow top using my presser foot as my guide. I did some simple straight line quilting right along my seams. Line your presser foot up with the seam. Follow the seam and sew along with a quarter of an inch.

Finished!

You may already have the skills to sew the rest of the cover. If you aren’t sure how to make the pillow top into a pillow cover, come back in a few days, and I will show you how to turn this top into an easy envelope cover.