#pillow case tutorial

The pillow I had was 21″x19.5″ so the fabric I bought is obviously for a pillow of that size. The tutorial is easily adjustable to any size pillow, just use those brains and do some basic math. 👍

First things first, take your patterned piece of fabric ONLY and make a rectangle (Keep in mind the direction of your pattern. Look ahead in the tutorial if you’re unsure of how to cut your fabric). This rectangle will cover the width and a little over half the height of your pillow. In my case, my rectangular piece of fabric is 22″ x 11.5.″

Using something between a basting stitch and a normal tight stitch (these stitches will be rendered useless later, but you need them to hold well) you’re going to sew down 3 of the 4 sides. I determined the seam allowance by taking the width of my pillow, 21″, subtracted it from the width of my fabric, 22″ - 21″ = 1″, and divided the result by 2, so 1/2″ seam allowance. I then sewed down 3 of the 4 edges, leaving 1 of the 2 wider sides open.

Next, take your contrast fabric out. We’re going to attach one side to the patterned fabric rectangle we just sewed. Your pillow does not have to be half and half exactly. For my pillow, I wanted more blue showing than gray so I accounted for that in my seams.

I marked a 1/2″ inch seam allowance on my patterned fabric and a 2.5″ seam allowance on my contrast fabric. That left me with 10.5″ of height for my patterned fabric and 9″ on my contrast fabric. (23″ height for contrast fabric divided by 2 gives 11.5″ per each side of pillow. The height of the pillow in total is 19.5″, subtract off the 10.5″ for the patterned fabric leaves 9″. 11.5″ minus 9″ gives us a 2.5″ seam allowance.) I marked the seams using tailor’s wax.

I lined up my marks on both pieces of fabric and put pins through. I can’t sew over the pins with how I have it, but when lining up my seam allowance marks, it’s much more accurate. I just take them out as I sew. Make sure to do a nice, tight stitch here. This stitch will NOT be rendered useless later.

You should now have something that looks like the picture below when turned right sides out.

With wrong sides out, fold your contrast fabric in half making sure you fold in the same seam allowance you had in the back. Mine was 2.5″ so that’s what I folded over. Now is a good time to double check your height to make sure it matches with that of your pillow.

Pin down the sides of your contrast fabric. Line up the seams of the pattern fabric with those you’re about to sew on your contrast fabric. Doing it this way ensures when you turn your pillow case inside out the seams are perfectly matched up! The width of your contrast fabric, seam to seam, should be the width of your pillow (21″ in my case).

Turn it inside out and now we have a super sleek looking pillow case thing.

Go ahead and play dress up with your pillow just to make sure all is going well.

Hmmm the corners seem loose... Don’t worry we’ll take care of this later!!

Time for the most dreaded part: the zipper. This project is a great way to get rid of zippers you’ll never use. I used a 22″ neon sea-green zipper because NO ONE CAN SEE IT!

Crease your fabric at the opening of the pillow case. Make sure to measure from the top of your fabric to the center to make sure the height is the same everywhere (consistency is key). The height of my pattern fabric is 10.5″ on either side so I measured in a few different places from the top to the crease making sure it was actually 10.5.″ If it wasn’t, I just adjusted the crease accordingly.

Time to pin in that zipper! From the top of the crease to the bottom of the zips, I measured 1/4.″ You could do more, but I wouldn’t do less than 1/4″!! See below for how I measured.

Sew that sucker down. I used a zipper foot and sewed as close as I could to the zipper. These stitches will show on your pillow so take your time to make it nice and straight. 🙂

Crease the contrast fabric in the same fashion as before. The zipper insertion is the same too, however it can be a bit closer to the crease this time. I put mine just below the crease so just a tad of gray shows.

WE HAVE ZIPS! You can go ahead and try your newly sewed pillow case on your pillow, but you’ll probably once again notice the corners are floppy. Time to take care of that!

I don’t have a great way to do this; it’s pretty much trial and error. Start out at smaller intervals and work your way up to larger ones. For my pillow, I brought in the corners by 1.25″ (measure 1.25″ from the top, mark, and then 1.25″ for the side, mark, you should have a cross where they intersect). I marked with my tailor’s wax a dart-ish thing from the seam by the zipper up to where I brought in the corners. I also marked the center of the fabric and darted from where I brought in the corners to the center. (You’ll have a pentagon looking thing drawn on your fabric.)

It’s kind of a hard process to describe. Hopefully the pictures below will make it more understandable.

Do the corner dart thing with the contrast fabric as well (or pattern fabric depending on what order you did it in). As you take in the corners, try the pillow case on your pillow and make adjustments as necessary. Feel free to use basting stitches and when you finally get it right, put in a nice tight stitch!

Lastly, after you’ve taken in your corners, and your pillow looks super sexy, take off the extra fabric inside by using pinking shears. If you don’t own a pair, and your fabric frays easily, I recommend doing a zig-zag stitch around the border of your pillow case where you’d like to cut off any extra fabric. You could also use a serger.

1. cut 1 yard of 45" wide fabric. fold it right sides together length wise, lining up the selvedges

2. sew side seams, leaving one short side open

3.  fold and press your open side about 1" all the way around. 

4. fold again and press a 4" hem.

5. topstitch hem, press and flip rightside out.

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