*This is 1 of 2 blog posts today. For the Lawn Fawn June Inspiration Week card featuring Owen's ABC's + Stitched Ovals, click HERE.*
As much as I love piecing big quilts sometimes I need a smaller project and my favorite is pillow covers! I love that with a new pillow cover you can completely change the look of a room.
For my pillow today, I was inspired by the Riley Blake Bella Blvd Snapshots Camera Multi fabric to create this pillow form for my teen daughter’s room (her room is done in aqua/black/white). I backed my pillow cover with the camera fabric but for the front I used THIS awesome free download from Fat Quarter Shop, part of their Snapshots Quilt Along. The download is free however the quilt along benefits St. Jude and if you can they ask that you donate to St. Jude for each download. I give $5 for each of the design I download. It’s for a great cause!
The camera block is part of the quilt backing design but by adding just a couple of simple borders you can make it into a pillow so easily! I’ve included a sketch of how I made my pillow and the sizes of the borders.
I combined lots of Riley Blake Bella Blvd Fabric scraps from my stash to piece together the camera and Instead of solid white for all the background I used my favorite, favoritest Snapshots Family Gray. I love the white background with gray doodles. It’s almost embarrassing how much yardage I have of this print! I quilted the front with a diagonal grid straight line quilting and used that great Snapshots Camera Multi fabric for the back.
My way of sewing pillow covers has evolved over the years and my current method is by far my favorite for a few reasons.
- First, all my pillow covers are removable. I have kids and a dog and they need washed periodically plus I like to switch them out and a removable pillow cover makes it easy to do that. However, I personally don’t like envelope backs for my pillows even though they are the easiest to sew. I think they make the pillows lose their shape and just don’t look as nice over time. All of my pillow covers have zippers. I tried the invisible zipper thing many, many times and sometimes it looked okay and most of the time it didn’t. I can’t seem to master that technique! I came across THIS tutorial for adding zippers under a hidden flap on the back of pillow covers and it changed my whole pillow making process. All my pillow covers are sewn this way now and I’ve never been happier. The pillow forms come out and go in so easy, the pillows have nice shape due to a zipper closure and they look nice and finished with that hidden zipper panel!
- Seond, I always, always add lining to the backing fabric (and sometimes the front if I’m not quilting the front). It’s an extra step and it takes a bit longer to get to the pillow cover sewing, but it’s so worth the extra effort! I follow the steps in THIS tutorial here and this makes the pillow cover much sturdier and it holds up better over time.
- Third, my pillow covers are all exactly the size of the pillow form I’m using or 1/2” bigger. For example, my pillow form for the camera pillow cover was 20” square and I cut my backing and quilted front to 20 1/2” square. This will give you a firm and full pillow. If you like your pillow covers to fit a bit looser, you might want to go up 3/4” to 1” bigger than the pillow form you’re using.
The letters below the thumbnails below link to stores where you can purchase the products shown in this post: FQS = to purchase from Fat Quarter Shop, FABRIC.COM = to purchase from Fabric.com, HT = to purchase from Hawthorne Threads, AZ = to purchase from Amazon. Affiliate links for Amazon are used.
Other Riley Blake Bella Blvd Fabrics used:
- Snapshots Collection: Cameras Multi
- Summer Breeze Collection: Fish Tail Blue
- Puppy Park Collection: black/white crosshatch
More projects featuring Bella Blvd Fabrics:
