King-Size Pillowcases

While face-timing my daughter in Oklahoma, I noticed Halloween pillowcases on her bed that I had made. Details are in my post titled and dated Halloween and Owl Pillowcases 6/26/2019. When I teased her about the holiday inappropriateness, she claimed that she liked them and they owned no other novelty ones in a king size. I promised to remedy the situation and I have subsequently made three pairs of king-sized pillowcases.

For each completed pair I have supplied three photos: one with the case on a pillow with its partner folded in half in front, a second with the close up of the three chosen fabrics, and a third with the pair of pillowcases folded in fourths. In each case I used a border print for the main body and selected accent and border fabrics to coordinate. All fabrics are from my stash – yay, me. The dimensions of a king-size pillow are 36" wide x 20" high. To go around the pillowcase I find 42" with a half inch seam leaves a comfortable 1" ease to slide the pillow in and out and to allow for cotton to shrink 3% – which is ~1 inch per yard. I have supplied the cutting dimensions I used for the three parts of the pillowcase. No instructions for assembly are in this post but can be found in my post titled and dated Pillowcase Sewing Tips 5/27/2019.

• main body 37" x 42" 
• border 10"x 42", 
• accent strip 2.5"x 42"

Since my daughter's family needed to cut down a large, mature, but cracked and ailing tree in her backyard within the last week, I chose tree-themed fabric to commemorate its demise. A Debbie Mumm border print seemed good. I thought my discovery of the blue/brown/gold stripe in my stash was serendipitous. It seems to echo the tree trunks and the twinkling stars. The white dotted accent strip reminded me of snow falling on a wintry day.

As a promise of better times and spring to come, for the second pair of pillowcases, I picked a floral border print. It is rather dark, rather than sporting pastel colors, so that palette keeps it masculine enough to be shared by her husband. I liked the words of affirmation in the dark navy background, too. The yellow accent strip picks up the flowers and the mottled green border picks up the shaded leaves.

My daughter loves blue and purple and used to belly dance. Somehow the border print for the third pair of pillowcases reminded me of Arabic dance. Her husband loved her dancing so hopefully these will also remind him of that. The addition of their 7½-year-old daughter and 4½-year-old son kind of put the kibosh on dancing for a while at least. The aqua border and pale yellow accent strip fabrics pick up the paisley stripes. The words love, peace, and joy subtly printed on the aqua should make for a good sleeping mantra.

I have pre-washed these six pillowcases and soon I will mail them off so all can sleep well. I will be linking up with MCM#171 at Cooking Up Quilts.