A Festive Quilted Pillow with Jingle Bells -

Hi Makers! It’s Sara Brown from @SaraBQuilts with a very merry project to talk about! It’s never too early for Christmas fabric, in my opinion, and Jingle Bells by Lindsey Wilkes is the perfect retro collection to get you in the holiday spirit! The prints in Jingle Bells have a nostalgic look to them but are so cute and modern at the same time!

While red and green will always be the classic Christmas color pairing, red and aqua together is such a fun way to add a little twist to your holiday decor. I was so excited to focus on these two colors with green as an accent color! My favorite prints are the Main Print in White, Red Sprinkles, and Cottage Holly Birds.

I decided to use these retro-looking Christmas fabrics with a retro-inspired pattern to make a fun Christmas pillow. I combined a 9” sawtooth star with Rosie Taylor’s (@rosie.taylor.crafts) Irish Chain Pinwheel block to make my quilted pillow top. You can find Rosie’s Irish Chain Pinwheel tutorial on her Instagram account here. I scaled down her 12” block to be a 9” block to fit my pillow form. I used three 9” blocks for each row to make a three by three square measuring 27” finished.

Once I had my pillow top pieced together, I decided to hand quilt it for a cozy, classic look! I love to use size 8 perle cotton in Dark Navy because I love the way blue looks next to red and aqua. I used tiny stitches (about 4 per 1.5”) outlining all of the pinwheels, Irish chains, and sawtooth stars. It left the quilted pillow so soft and wrinkly.

I finished my pillow off by layering two pieces on the backside of the quilt, one about two thirds of the length of the pillow and one about half the length of the pillow, with the shorter one on top. It holds the pillow form in nicely and doesn’t require a zipper!

I am so excited for the weather to get colder and for it to be time to bring out my Christmas decor, including this pillow, but for now I will be enjoying summer and some poolside relaxing!