hello today I'd like to show you how I go about making a pillowcase just a regular pillowcase for pillow that you might use on a bed and I used to make pillowcases for my children and now I've got grandchildren coming along I guess I'll be making them for them too it's so nice to be able to make them out of fun fabrics and I've got one that I've made here using a very nice little owl fabric owls I know don't really sleep at night so it could be a little bit of a problem we don't want to make it out of a fabric that's going to keep the child awake but anyway they don't have to be for children of course but this one that I've done here is probably for a child or somebody who really dislikes owls so it takes quite a lot of fabric and what I've got inside here is a really nice turn back so that when it's on the pillow it stays snugly on there and then on the front bit here I've just got like a little strip here that I've sewn that it's actually got a raw edge in it so everything's really nice and neat and tidy so to start with you need to have one on one eight yards of fabric or a meter and that was that will use pretty much most of the fabric there's just a little bit that we chopped off at the ends so I'll quickly show you how I cut bet to start with so I've got here my my one-way eight yards or a metre of fabric and I folded it with the sole bridges together in half and then I folded that over again so that the sole bridges come to that fold so I've got four layers of fabric there and I've lined it up with the markings on my board so everything's sitting nice and straight when you fold it over four times you need to make sure that everything stays nice and straight now I'm going to trim just this little raw edge off just the mirrors a little bit just to make sure it's all nice and straight at the end and I'm going to use the markings on my board to help me measure so we've got the full width of fabric here and I'm going to cut a piece off that's nineteen and a half inches so using these markings on the board I'm going to come along and cut at nineteen and a half that will be for either the front or the back of the pillowcase and the other piece is the same size this one also needs to be 19 and and you can see that just gets very nicely just out of that amount of fabric and so now I've got two strips that the full width of the fabric 19 and a half inches long wide wide I guess the fabrics wife so now I need to trim the length so this time because I'm using a shorter ruler I probably could do it the full width but I tend to work for the shorter ruler so I will fold that in half again the other way this time so that I've got my selvages at each end of the fabric and I'm going to line that up again with a line on the board and I'm going to just trim off the selvages it's always a good idea to take the salvages off because they can shrink in the wash and cause other sorts of problems and now I'm going to come along this is going to be the front of my pillowcase and I'm going to cut this one at 33 inches so because I've got a nice big board I can come all the way along to 33 if you've got a shorter board you could fold this over again and cut it at maybe 16 and 1/2 cut it in half but anyway because I've got the full board I'm going to go to 33 inches and cut that off so now this piece here we won't need that's extra that could go in the next quilt so that's the France and now while we're doing this bit of cutting we'll cut for the back as well the back is that it's slightly different lengths because of that long turnover that goes into the pillow again fold it in half along the length and trim off those soldiers I just thought it might help you because it's quite large pieces and sometimes we're not sure how to cut them but it's really quite simple keep everything straight and folded okay this one is the back and we're going to cut this one at 36 inches which is the full length of my board and or if you have to fold it in half it would be at 18 inches so six inches and again we don't know need this piece another piece for the next course so this is the back so we might get the back prepared now while we're here with this so I'm just going to bring over a little temporary ironing peg that I've got here that's wide enough for my pillowcase and at one of the shorter sides now I'm just going to to fold that to keep this up the right way I hope that's not going to be upside down think about that okay we're going to fold over one of the shorter edge is just half an inch I've got my iron here and then we're going to fold it half an inch and then again so that we can just sew a nice little hem on that that's my first full pressed and now the second one over so just press that and then I'm going to go to the sewing machine and quickly so that so just sewing you're just sewing that down to form a hymn and just for the straight stitch and fairly close to the fold and that you fold it over there so that's pretty good that's the back ready to go now we'll work on the front at the front because it's got that little turn back bit though did you see that when we were doing this we've got a nice little sort of little pleated bit in here and so when I folded this over that the raw edge from that piece that was folded over is actually caught up in this seam that we're going to sew here so I'm not sure how well you can see that but you'll see what I'm doing and as I do it so this is the front so what I'm going to do is turn my age now just need to do a little bit of measuring for this I want to fold it in four and a half inches so I'm going to grab a couple of pins and again I'm using the measurements of my border I love the measurements on my board they help me do so many things so I'm going to come down four and a half inches from from this edge so I go one two three four and a half put the pin in there and the same at the other end keeping it nice and straight so one two three four and a half so I want to actually fold that over at that stage so I'm going to bring my little ironing mat back because I've got a pin at both ends that should sit nice and straight there and I want to press that fold so that's now the open edge of the pillowcase and now what I want to do is another fold where that at the line at the line where that piece of fabric comes up to so you can probably do it by feel you can pop another couple of pins and if you need to so you want that to fold so that that the edge of that fabric sits right at the fold line if possible let's all fit and again we're going to press that so now I'm going to take that to the sewing machine so what we've got here is a the front of our pillowcase with a nice flat folded right over and we're going to do some sewing but we're sewing on this edge not the edge in here this edge out here and just quarter of an inch or ever so slightly more than quarter of an inch but just so that we are in case in closing that fold with that other piece of fabric in there with the raw edges inside so I'm just going to come along here so just about quarter of an inch away from the folded edge that's that quick done so we'll just give that another quick press so that's sitting nice and flat so what we've got is that this sown bit here but in actual fact we're wanting to open that bag out again now and you can see on the back that this is actually enclosed in that sing that edge so it's all nice and neat and tidy so it doesn't really show as a little tuck on it on a fabric that's as busy as this one but if you had a plainer fabric it would look very smart to have this little bit pleated over there so we'll just quickly press it from both sides this time and so that's the front made and the backs made now we're just going to put them together right okay so now what we do is lay them right sides together so you you have nice finished edge of your front it's on my right and I want the finished edge of my back also at that end but it's going to extend beyond so we're going to pop this these right sides together and we're going to match the other end that hasn't yet had any attention paid to it and you could pop a couple of pins in there if you'd like to just to hold it so you want to match those ends up nicely and then we're going to come keeping your edges nicely together it might be easier at this stage to turn it over so that the backs on the underside so you want to make sure your edges are sitting well together bring this up and then this back that's now extending beyond here you want to fold that right over and this pin that was saw floating here can go in there and I'm using pins today don't really like pins they don't like me we're making prints today and the same thing on this side you want that to fold so right on that fold at the front piece you want to deform right over at that point and can come down here and if we're just pinning those other little ends in place just helps everything sit nicely so now I'm going to go with my quarter inch seam allowance all the way around three sides don't sew across this side and I'll never get into your pillowcase so I'm back to the sewing machine and I'm going to sew around again just that quarter inch seam allowance all the way around the three sides coming up to the other side there so just make sure that everything is sitting nicely and that you include all layers at this stage doesn't take long to make a pillowcase so this is right make a nice little extra on a bed sometimes a child just needs a gift or an extra little bit of comfort or bit of fun as I said I'm not something that's going to keep them awake at night okay all the weight entry corners give it at your corner go across the box at the end I've gone around my three sides I'm just a mouse bit coming on to that several layers of fabric together here lock-off there so what we've got at the moment is a strange-looking pillowcase because you can looks like you can't get into it but I'm actually going to neaten those edges if you've got an overlocker now would be a good time to use it because I don't really want all this sort of fraying going on and so I'm going to pop my machine onto a zig-zag stitch and run it so that the zigzag is going over the raw edges there and that just helps stop it unraveling or fraying in the wash and things like that so again I'm going to spin to go all the way around with my zig-zag stitch so most of the stitches on the fabric in the seam allowance I will do all three sighs that's the same as I did for the straight stitch you I am finishing up my seat saving right that's better as I said if you have an overlocker that would do a really good job on this but my overlock is not in the least bit handy just now so we won't do that okay so now I've finished all the sewing everything is enclosed it's all looking nice so now what we do is we fold this back so we want to pop this corner through and the same with this corner pop that one through and so that's the flat that's going to cover over the pillow end and now we can turn the pillowcase out the right way so we've got these corners you want to push them out but we need a good press but other than that you're all done that wasn't so painful so there it is one hello case for a very nicely knitted neaten front edge there the pillow is going to tuck nicely under under there and I've got one on a pillow behind me which I'll show you quickly as well so that's the pillow case all done just keep an eye out if you've got a one way fabric like I have that you're keeping them going the same way you don't want the owls to be upside-down necessarily because they probably don't sleep so well like that and I've got one of the pillow cases that I've made here which I've just done very slightly differently because I've put a border prints along one edge so I've actually made this like is smaller turn back here and but I've a placated a border along there so that was just another little idea and for a pillow case and you can see that that tucks nicely into there's a good overlap there so that the pillow won't work its way out of the pillow case so I just think that that's a a really nice idea for a pillow case great way for using up some delicious fabrics they can be plainer fabrics for the border or you can do something that's a little bit busier or you could do some really special pillow cases it's just the same with some nice linen fabrics and or satin whatever it is that you like for pillowcases so I just thought I would show you how I go about making pillow cases thank you