Reading Pillow Tutorial

Reading Pillow Tutorial – Looking for a quick and easy sewing tutorial to make today? Everyone will love to have their favorite book to read about it!

When you love to sew and you love to make something for people who love to read, you might love this quick and easy tutorial to make the perfect reading pillow, also known as a pocket pillow.

All you need is to find a pretty fabric and cut out all the pieces and follow the easy to sew steps and in less than 30 minutes you will get it finished!

Reading Pillow Tutorial

Reading Pillow Tutorial – Supplies And Tools

• 2 pieces of fabric of 18 x 18 inches (main fabric)
• 1 piece of thin batting fabric of 18 x 18 inches
• 1 piece of fabric of 3 x 10 inches
• 1 piece of fabric of 11 x 18 inches (this is for the pocket)
• Pins
• Ruler or measuring tape
• Scissors
• Iron
• Sewing Machine

Step 1 – Measure And Cut Out All The Fabric

You might need to prewash all the fabrics before you start working on this tutorial.

You can use a ruler and a rotary cutter to measure and cut out all the fabric pieces for this tutorial.

Step 2 – How To Quilt The Pillow Front Piece

For this tutorial, you need to work on the machine quilting of the front piece, you need to lay the fabric piece over the batting fabric and pinch a few pins to keep the two layers together as you work on the machine quilting.

I decided to do a circular quilting, starting from the center of the piece and making the circle bigger as I kept working on it. It will take some time to finish it as I did the circles bigger as the presser feet width.

You can mark the quilting line width with a pencil for fabric and make it wider, or you can also work on the quilting with a different pattern, like squares or lines.

The quilted piece should look like this when finished.

Step 3 – Top Stitching The Pocket

You will need to fold twice to the back (1/2″) on one of the sides of the pocket and stitch on twice on your sewing machine.

Step 4 – Sew On The Handle

Fold both sides of the handle, like it’s shown on the picture below, press.

Fold again to make both sides to meet, press and pinch a few pins.

Stitch on the sewing machine both sides.

Step 5 – Assemble The Front For The Reading Pillow

On your work table, lay the quilted piece and lay over it the pocket on its place, on the top side of the quilted piece, mark the middle and measure 2 inches to each side to place the handle, pinch a few pins to keep all the pieces on their places.

Step 6 – Assemble The Reading Pillow

Lay the piece for the back, you can see on the picture below, I made a piece using some left over of this fabric as I want to show you that you can use a full piece of fabric for this step or you can use any piece of fabric you have in your stash.

Pinch a few pins and take out the pins holding the handle and the pocket on the back piece and pinch those pins again.

Sew around the pillow and leave a gap on the bottom side to turn the pillow out.

Step 7 – Turn Out The Reading Pillow

Cut out diagonally the four corners with the help of a pair of scissors, and turn out the pillow, push out from the inside all the seams.

Top stitch all around the reading pillow, leaving open the gap. Fill up the pillow with some soft pillow stuffing and top stitch to close the gap.

The Reading Pillow is finished and it’s ready to be used, just insert your favorite book and enjoy a good reading moment!

The Reading Pillow with handle is perfect to be made for yourself or to give it as a present to someone special for you!

Young children will love to have one reading pillow made by you!

How To Wash The Reading Pillow.

You can wash the reading pillow with the same directions you follow to wash any pillow, but you can also remove the stuffing and wash out the pillow, and stuff it again when it’s dried.

Don’t press the pillow as the quilting was made with batting fabric.

Reading Pillow Tutorial – Closing Thoughts

Whether you’re a beginner or the more experienced sewer, you might be looking for an easy sewing tutorial to make a sewing project to give it as a present for someone who loves reading!

This tutorial will help you to try out the circle quilting of a piece, it is fun to work on it and it looks amazing!

This tutorial is so easy to make that I’m sure once you finished making your first reading pillow, you’ll be making a few more to have them ready to give them away to your children, and also to your friends.

More Easy Sewing Tutorials To Make

• DIY Soup Bowl Cozy – Easy tutorial for beginners and the more experienced sewer would love to make!
• DIY Reusable Grocery Bag – I’m sure you will be making more than one reusable grocery bags with this tutorial.