House Pillowcases

My friend Kathie and I get together once a month to sew a project or try a new technique. In October I was going to demonstrate, and she was going to learn, the burrito method of making pillowcases. My 5/27/19 blog post has a brief tutorial on the sewing portion of how I make these. She made one pillowcase at my house with my fabric selections and me coaching her. I just love that house fabric! I waffled between orange and brown as the color for the accent strip and then decided the brown would bring out the tree trunks.

Kathie loved the magic of how these come out and liked the additional bonus of making French seams. She went home that night and made a pillowcase of her own, adding a touch of decorative stitching to the accent strip. I liked that idea and added some itty bitty decor on my accent band, also. I first tried to find the correct brown color thread in my stash but was unsuccessful, having only brown options that were too dark (almost black) and brown choices that were too light (almost beige). Necessity being the mother of invention, I found instead a bright green like the border and used it to make decorative leaves. I like the way the "foliage" echoes the trees.

A couple days later, I got out my fabrics again to make the complementary partner to the king size pillowcase we had made that day as a learning tool. I had assured Kathie that after she'd made a few pillowcases and the technique was no longer new, she could whip out a pillowcase in 20-30 minutes. Confident I knew what I was doing, I sewed my second pillowcase up in short order, being careful enough to reverse the polarity of the band side. Then I went to photograph the pair for my blog and ... whoops! They were different widths. So much for cocky self confidence. At least I discovered this faux pas before deploying them on the bed.

In my blog post for 5/11/19 I had stated cutting instruction for standard, queen, and king size pillowcases for directional and non-directional fabric. I quote here, highlighting where I had goofed. 

With directional fabric for a king size pillow (20" x 36"):
Cut the main body 41"along the grain x 37" slightly less than the WOF. The 41" wraps around the pillow with only one seam along the length. Main body needs 1¼ yards to accommodate the 41".

I had absent-mindedly left out the step of cutting the 37" width. No harm, no foul. I simply cut off the excess width from the completed pillowcase, leaving a ½" for the new French seam at the far end from the opening, and sewed the seam again.

Here is the finished pair of cases. They are folded for storage in my linen closet -- in half, and then thirds; but trust me, yes, the two pillowcases are indeed the same size now.