Rainbow Heart Pillow

Hi there, I’m Amanda! I’m the “new kid” around here. I starting working at Cotton Cuts in August 2019. I love being able to see all the fabrics that everyone is receiving and imagining all the beautiful projects that they will make.

I have been a crafty person my whole life, but I didn’t learn how to sew until 2009 when my mother-in-law bought me my first sewing machine and taught me how to make a tote bag. My second project was making a dress for my daughter to wear to her first birthday party, and I’ve been sewing and making ever since!

The project I’m going to share with you today is not a tutorial, but I wanted to take a minute to share an AMAZING product that I have recently found.

In my house, we love rainbows - my daughter says her favorite color is rainbow! A few years ago I found this amazing rainbow quilt pattern by Trish Poolson (it’s her Promise Quilt) and absolutely fell in love with it. It took me several years to get up the courage to start the project, but we are so happy with how it turned out.

When Kim asked us to do projects to share, this one kept popping up in my head, and I remembered that Trish had also posted about making a pillow to match the quilt. I sent her a message on Instagram and she said that she just used the pattern for the quilt and adjusted the size to use with the TenSisters Easy Piecing Grid.

I had no idea what this “easy piecing grid” thing was, so I did some research...and I promise you that this product is going to change your life.

They have a few different sizes of the easy piecing grid, but for this project I used the 1.5” finished square size. It is so easy peasy - you cut your squares, lay them out on the grid, and iron them on, just like HeatnBond.

After you get all your pieces attached, you fold on the dotted line and sew with your ¼ seam allowance.

When that is done, you press everything and you have beautiful amazing squares with perfectly matching corners! (well, mostly. My HSTs got a little wonky on the heart, but it just adds character, right?)

To finish off the pillow I added an invisible zipper (the very first one I’ve ever done! And I only had to re-do it twice!) and made the back of the pillow with some bigger pieces of the fabric.

And ta-da! I made a pillow!

Aren’t these fabrics beautiful?  I’ve never sewn with batiks before (to be honest, before joining Cotton Cuts, I didn’t even know what a batik was) but I really enjoyed them for this project. There are so many patterns and colors and every single piece is different from the next - I had a really tough time narrowing down which fabrics to use!

I love using this easy piecing grid! The boy that lives next door to us recently had a birthday, and he loves robots and the color pink, so I put together a robot pillow for him.

We’re going to be auctioning the heart pillow on Facebook live at 2:00 pm on May 11th. We’ll be adding a 3 month membership to Java, our seasonally coordinated batik membership and all of the proceeds will be given to me, the maker!

If you’d like to try the amazing grid piecing system, we have a mini kit available in the shop. Click here for more details!