Fleece Flower Pillow {Tutorial}

Hi! I’m really excited to share this tutorial! I have made quite a few flower pillows out of felt, and it always takes so much time to cut out 80+ individual petals. So, I decided to try making the petals out of strips of scallops and it is SO MUCH faster. I also made this pillow out of fleece which is softer than felt and doesn’t pill as much.  So here’s the tutorial…

This tutorial is for a 14”x14” envelope-style pillow. You can easily adjust my measurements to make a larger pillow or a pillow with a zipper, etc.

Materials:

½ yard of cotton fabric

½ yard of fleece

thread that matched the fleece

14” pillow form

sewing supplies (machine, scissors, etc.)

Use a rotary cutter and mat to cut your fabric down to 15”. You will now have a rectangle measuring 15” x 45” (the width of the bolt).

Out of that rectangle, cut a 15”x15” square.  Cut the rest of the rectangle into two 15” x 10” rectangles.

Hem one of the 15” sides on both of the rectangles. If you use the selvage edges you only have to iron it over one time.

Trace 10” diameter circle onto the center of your 15”x15” square. Just find a plate or bowl that is about 10” across.  Your marking will be covered up, but you could use a disappearing marker to be safe.

Fold your fleece fabric in half so that you can cut out two layers at a time. Cut out a scallop pattern. It doesn’t have to be perfectly even, but try not to have any jagged cuts. Each scallop is about 2” wide and 1” tall. Make sure to leave about ½” of height in between each scallop.  I just freehand it but you could print off  a template to be more precise.

When you got to the end of the strip, unfold it and you’ll have a strip twice as long. Cut off the inverse of the scallop with a straight line and cut out another scallop. Cut out 6 strips to start with, but you might need more.

Before you start sewing, make sure you have a full bobbin. The flower gets pretty thick so it’s hard to get it out from under the presser foot to refill the bobbin. (Sorry the color is off in these photos because it was late at night).

Start sewing a fleece strip along the circle that you drew on your fabric.  After you make it around the circle once, bring the strip about a ½ inch to the left of the past row and keep spiraling inward. Make sure the newest row overlaps and covers up the bottom of the past row.

When you get to the end of a strip, just overlap the new one a little bit, backstitch, and keep going. 

As you get closer to the center, you might need to bunch up the fleece strip in places to make it follow the curve of the circle better.

Keep going all the way to the center until you can barely see any of your main fabric through the middle.

Take the pillow front out of your sewing machine. It’s pretty thick so it will be a little tricky to get it out from under the presser foot.

For the center, I rolled a thin strip of fleece into a circle and hand-sewed it on. A button would also be really cute in the center.

To finish the pillow, lay the front down, flower facing up. Then lay the rectangles over, right sides of the fabric facing down.

Pin and sew all the way around.

Turn the pillow inside out, poke the corners out and fill with the pillow form. Enjoy your new pillow!