Don’t think for a minute that this is a tutorial, if this were an actual tutorial with all the specifics and details involved, I wouldn’t get this written until Christmas… and its January now. I enjoyed making this pillow based on my mini quilt design and just thought I would share it with you. My original mini quilt was created by printing the image on fabric, and then coloring with Derwent’s inktense pencils. The color was sealed into the fabric using textile medium.
For the larger pillow I first decided what size pillow I wanted and worked backwards. In this case I wanted a finished pillow around 21” to fit a 22” pillow blank. I wanted to quilt it first to “shrink it” before cutting to 21”. I decided a center white square of 16” and borders at 4” would allow extra to square up after quilting.
I then had to decide how much I needed to enlarge the letters, I decided to enlarge the letters from the original 3 1/4” to 6 3/8” which according to my Quilters Assistant Proportional Scale, was 193%. Once I enlarged the letters and heart I traced them, in reverse, onto paper backed fusible web and pressed the fusible web to the back of my applique fabric. Once cut out and fused to the top, I stitched a small zig zag stitch all around each letter.
I layered the top with batting and backing, ditch stitched the applique and did a freemotion scattered heart fill in the background and simple straight stitch quilting in the border.
Once the quilting was complete, I trimmed the pillow top to 22” square. I’m both cheap and lazy, so rather than insert a zipper to allow my pillow sham to go on and off, I do a split back. I cut 2 pieces of fabric the height of my pillow, I determine the width as follows: 1/2 the width of the pillow, in this case 22” divided by 2 = 11 + 1” folded back two times on the edge= 2” + 3” overlap divided by 2= 1 1/2”. 11” + 2” + 1 1/2” = 14.5” add another 1” because I’m generally bad at math and so I cut each side of the back at 15 1/2”, on the center back edge of each side, I folded 1” back and pressed, folded again, pressed and stitched. I repeated on the other piece. Once the center overlaps were stitched, Place the folded stitched edges together in the center, overlapping the two sides until there is 3” covered overlap. (I only did a 2” overlap on this pillow but it was so plump, 3” overlap would have been better) I stitch the two halves of the overlap together at the top and bottom using a 5/8” seam allowance (I use a 1/2” seam allowance on pillows) so that the reinforcing stitches are just inside the pillow seam where it is sewn to the top. That way It pulls at the reinforcement stitches not at the seam when I pull the pillow blank in and out of the cover.
I then placed the pillow top on top of the stitched back and trimmed to match the size of the pillow top. with right sides together, I stitched a 1/2” seam allowance all around the edge. Then I finished the inside with a zig zag stitch and trimmed the corners to eliminate bulk.
Turn the pillow sham right side out and insert your pillow blank.
I hope you enjoyed this non-tutorial, tutorial and I wish you a very happy Valentine’s season.
