me, myself & kai

Wanna make a pillow star? Sure ya do. It’s really no sweat. These pillows look complicated but are a piece of cake to make. You’re just sewing a bunch of squares together. It’s all straight edges. Yay!

OK. Let’s get started. Obviously you’ll need fabric, a sewing machine and polyfill or some type of pillow stuffing. You’ll also need buttons and doll needles. Doll needles look like really long embroidery needles. You’ll see why you need ‘em in in part 2 of this tutorial.

Here we go. You’ll need a total of 20 squares. I made mine 5 inches by 5 inches but you can make ‘em any size you want. If you go small enough you’ll end up with a cute pin cushion. *ETA: I used a 3/4 seam allowance throughout this pattern.

1) Take square 1 and sew it to square 2, right sides together (so the seam is on the wrong side) You should end up with this:

2) Now take square 3 and sew it to the top of square 1, again right sides together. Make sure you sew to the very edge of square 1 but not onto square 2.

3) Take square 4 and sew it to the top of square 2, right sides together. Make sure you sew to the edge of square 2 but not onto square 1. You should end up with a little “V” between squares 3 and 4:

4) Take square 5 and sew it to the right edge of square 3 along one edge of the V slant. Right sides together. I find it helps to pin the fabric at this point.

5) There’s now a little “v” between square 5 and square 4. Sew this edge of square 5 to that edge of square 4. Right sides together.

Voila. You have a completed pillow star top:

Repeat steps 1-5 to make the pillow star bottom and I’ll show you how to put the sides together in part 2 of this tutorial.

Go to part two.