How to Use Templates for Pillow Pairs

Pillow pairs are made of up of 2-3 designs. One is the featured design that will usually be in the center, as well as one or two designs that will be the corner elements framing the featured design. This tutorial will walk you through using templates of these designs to make a fully embroidered pillow.

A template, or printout, of a design is an excellent tool to help with placement. Print a template of the design using an embroidery software.

We recommend Wilcom's Hatch software which comes in different levels depending on what you'd like to use the software for. Hatch Organizer works well to view your designs, print dielines and templates, change design colors, and create basic design layouts. (This is an affiliate link. We may earn commission on purchased made through this link.

To start the pillow cover using the pillow pair designs, determine which size of pillow blank you will be using. In this example ours is 18" by 18". This will help determine the size of the pillow pair designs you use.

Use a fabric marking tool of your choice to draw a box on the right side of your chosen fabric indicating the edges of your pillow cover front. Ours will be 20" by 20" to account for the seam allowance and fullness of the pillow form. 

Pillow pair placement is easiest when starting with the feature design. Since this will be in the center of the pillow, framed by the corner designs, you can figure out the placement for the featured design by dividing the box in half vertically and horizontally. Use a quilting ruler to draw the cross hairs.

After drawing the cross hairs for the featured design, cut a piece of stabilizer larger than your hoop. Spray the stabilizer with temporary spray adhesive and smooth in place on the wrong side of the fabric behind the cross hairs. Using a separate piece of stabilizer for each of the designs helps to limit the amount of puckering due to multiple designs.

Hoop the fabric and stabilizer together.

Attach the hoop to the embroidery machine and follow the color change sheet for your chosen design to embroider out the featured design. 

After the design has finished embroidering, remove the hoop from the machine. Unhoop the design and carefully trim away the excess stabilizer. 

Now for the fun part! Determine the layout for the corner pieces by using your templates to visualize the completed pillow By adjusting how close or far the corners are placed from the feature design, you can create different effects and fit a range of pillow sizes.

Once you've decided where you would like the corners to be, in this example we chose to place the corners closer to closely frame the featured design, use your marking tool and quilters ruler to draw the cross hairs for the first corner design.

Continue after the first corner to repeat marking the cross hairs in the three remaining corners.

Decide which corner you would like to start with. Again, spray a piece of cutaway stabilizer with temporary spray adhesive and place on the wrong side of your fabric. Continue to hoop the fabric and stabilizer like before. 

Attach the hoop to the machine once again, and follow the color change sheet to embroider the first corner. 

When the corner has finished embroidering, remove from the machine and unhoop the design. Trim away the excess stabilizer.

Repeat embroidering out the final three corners, rotating the designs as needed.

After all of the corners have been embroidered follow the package directions to remove your markings and press. 

Continue to finish the pillow cover in your preferred method.