Quilted Heart Applique Pillows Tutorial

Pillows are one of my favorite things to make and these cute quilted heart applique pillows are fast and easy to make following my tutorial.

Quilted Heart Applique Pillows Tutorial

15 inch square pillows

Quilted pillows are fast and easy to make, especially when you use your AccuQuilt cutter. Applique envelope pillows made with AccuQuilt GO! dies take no time at all! I used the Queen of Hearts AccuQuilt die for my bright and colorful pillows for our guest bedroom.

The quilt on the bed is called Fruit Slices and is no longer available from Craftsy.

I know my granddaughters will love them. I originally showed the pillows on AccuQuilt’s blog in a post called A Simple Guide to the AccuQuilt Queen of Hearts pillow in January and thought I would share it here in case you missed it.

The AccuQuilt die has several sizes of cute hearts with the largest one approximately 4 inches wide and the tallest one is almost 4 inches tall, you can cut out heart shapes in no time at all.

Don’t have the die?

Don’t worry, I have a few different sizes of heart templates that you can download and trace to make this.

Little hearts like this are the perfect size for your scraps!  Both pillows were made with leftover pieces from the quilts I am making for the bedroom and still haven’t finished.

GO! Fabric Cutter and die: 

• GO! Baby (55600)
• GO! Cutter (55100S)
• GO! Big Electric (55500)

GO! Queen of Hearts (55325)

Fabric:

• Scraps for the hearts
• 1-yard white fabric
• 1-yard Heat n Bond Lite
• Batting
• 2 – 15″ pillow forms

Directions:

Apply Heat n Bond Lite to the back of your scraps following the directions on the package before running the fabric through your AccuQuilt GO! cutter. Cut out a variety of hearts. A fun way to use your scraps is to sew them into strips and create new fabric.

I had some scraps that were already sewn together and I used them to make some fun little hearts.

Cut the white fabric into two 17 inch squares. I like to cut my pillow squares bigger than I need and then trim to size after I have quilted them.

Fold your fabric in half, then half again and then at a diagonal for lines to help with placement of your hearts. Create a design using a variety of colors and hearts. 

Applique your hearts – I placed telephone book paper behind my hearts before I did my applique for stability. I have several quilt projects that I have made using this method and have recently updated my Batik Summer Tablerunner tutorial and included a free downloadable printable.

I used my vintage straight stitch domestic 15-91 Singer sewing machine and did a wiggle stitch to applique around the hearts using various colors of Aurifil thread. Then I removed the paper from the back of the applique.

Quilting – add batting to the back of each pillow front and quilt as desired. I did a simple meandering design.

Quilting adds so much!

Trim the pillow tops to 16 inches square

Envelope style pillow backing

For each pillow cut two – 16-inch x 13-inch pieces from the white fabric. Create a hem by folding over the 16-inch edge 1/4″ and press. Fold over the same edge again, press and stitch. Do this for both pieces.

Lay your pillow front right side up and then lay the backing pieces on top face down. Line up the sides and overlap the center creating an envelope.

Pin and stitch with a 1/2″ seam allowance. Press, trim corners and turn right side out – insert your pillow form.

Repeat this for the second pillow.

Quilted Heart Applique Pillows Tutorial

Get a PDF of this tutorial which includes free heart applique templates!

If you are looking for more ideas for applique projects, you might enjoy some of my previous quilt tutorials.