QListView/QListWidget with custom items and custom item widgets

I think you need to subclass QItemDelegate.

QItemDelegate can be used to provide
custom display features and editor
widgets for item views based on
QAbstractItemView subclasses. Using a
delegate for this purpose allows the
display and editing mechanisms to be
customized and developed independently
from the model and view.

This code is taken from Qt’s examples, the torrent application.

class TorrentViewDelegate : public QItemDelegate
{
    Q_OBJECT
public:
    inline TorrentViewDelegate(MainWindow *mainWindow) : QItemDelegate(mainWindow) {}

    inline void paint(QPainter *painter, const QStyleOptionViewItem &option,
                      const QModelIndex &index ) const
    {
        if (index.column() != 2) {
            QItemDelegate::paint(painter, option, index);
            return;
        }

        // Set up a QStyleOptionProgressBar to precisely mimic the
        // environment of a progress bar.
        QStyleOptionProgressBar progressBarOption;
        progressBarOption.state = QStyle::State_Enabled;
        progressBarOption.direction = QApplication::layoutDirection();
        progressBarOption.rect = option.rect;
        progressBarOption.fontMetrics = QApplication::fontMetrics();
        progressBarOption.minimum = 0;
        progressBarOption.maximum = 100;
        progressBarOption.textAlignment = Qt::AlignCenter;
        progressBarOption.textVisible = true;

        // Set the progress and text values of the style option.
        int progress = qobject_cast<MainWindow *>(parent())->clientForRow(index.row())->progress();
        progressBarOption.progress = progress < 0 ? 0 : progress;
        progressBarOption.text = QString().sprintf("%d%%", progressBarOption.progress);

        // Draw the progress bar onto the view.
        QApplication::style()->drawControl(QStyle::CE_ProgressBar, &progressBarOption, painter);
    }
};

Basically as you can see it checks if the column to be painted is of a specific index, if so it paints a progress bar. I think you could tweak it a little and instead of using a QStyleOption you could use your own widget.

edit: don’t forget to setup your item delegate with your QListView using setItemDelegate.

While investigating your question I’ve stumbled upon this thread, which elaborates how to paint a custom widget using a QItemDelegate, I believe it has all the info you might need.