Themed Pillowcases

I am gradually getting my sewing and quilting mojo back while whittling down my stash of novelty prints, most of which were an impulse buy. This week I made up four pairs of pillowcases. For non-directional fabric they take ¾ yard for the main body. To whittle down my stash of 1-yard pieces, I use the remaining ¼ yard for the border of the complementary pillowcase: two pillowcases need two yards, plus contrasting strip for the accent band. For Halloween there were these two pair, witches and spiders, for a standard size pillow.

For Christmas there was this pair, fat sock monkeys mated with cars, also for a standard size pillow.

For king-size bed pillows, I made this pair with a beach hut theme and striped borders. Aside from being for larger size pillows, these pillowcases needed extra fabric in order to get the orientation of the print correct when the pillow is used on the bed. Keeping this in mind, I'd bought 2½ yards each of this and another beach hut print while on my quilt tour travel at Cinnamon's Quilt Shoppe detailed in my 3/29/19 post for Jacksonville, Florida. I also needed to take care that the border was added on opposite sides of the main body otherwise one pillow would be upside down and one right side up when the striped band on each was oriented outward.

This pair of another beach hut print king size pillowcases also had a directional main body fabric but the border stripe was directional as well. I just happened to have this bird/fish/crab/hut stripe in my stash and it serendipitously went perfectly with the main body fabric. Here is that pair of pillowcases followed by a closeup of the directional stripe border.

My previous post had my hand written cutting dimensions for the pillowcases. I decided to formalize them in this post. Cut dimensions assume pillowcase will be sewn with ½" seams. By the way, queen size pillows are 20" x 30" but I do not have any of those.

With non-directional fabric for a standard size pillow (20" x 26"):

Cut the main body 27"along the grain x 41" slightly less than the WOF. The 41" wraps around the pillow with only one seam along the length. Main body needs ¾ yard.

With directional fabric for a standard size pillow (20" x 26") :

Cut the main body 41" along the grain x 27" slightly more than half the WOF. The 41" still wraps around the pillow but now the print will not runs sideways when it is on the bed. Main body needs 1¼ yard to accommodate the 41".

With non-directional fabric for a king size pillow (20" x 36"):

Cut the main body 37"along the grain x 41" slightly less than the WOF. The 41" wraps around the pillow with only one seam along the length. Main body needs 1⅛ yards to accommodate 37" but in a pinch, 1 yard will do and you can compensate with a slightly wider border if desired.

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".

Border and accent strips

Cut these 41" wide since they each wrap around the 20" dimension of the pillow with a 1" seam allowance. I use ¼ yard for my borders and 2" for my accents. For king size pillows if I have enough of the fabric I want to use, I sometimes increase the dimension to 10" for borders and 3" for accents. Somehow it does not bother me at all if the print on the borders runs sideways since the end flaps hang off the edge of the mattress.

I needed to tidy my sewing room to work on these pillowcases and my stash has now been reduced by 12 yards. Plus I am back into sewing mode. Yay, me – a triple bonus! Oh, I almost forget one more bonus. These pillowcases will actually get used.

Resuming Sewing with a Pillowcase

It has been three weeks since my last DL2Q post. Yikes! In my defense, I have been traveling and my last three posts can attest to that, visiting quilt shops in South Carolina (post dated 3/27/19), Georgia (post dated 3/28/19), and Florida (post dated 3/29/19). My last productive posts, where I actually sewed something, date back to February where I made a few BOM's for my quilt guild and a baby quilt for my daughter's newly born nephew (post dated 2/21/19). It is time to stop buying fabric and start consuming fabric. When I get out of a rhythm, it is hard for me to resume that sewing tempo. I traveled again for eight days in North Carolina for my sister's 80th birthday last week, but before leaving, I whipped out a pillowcase, serving both as a mini-gift for her and a warmup for me to get back into the swing of stitching.

I picked out my three fabrics for the main body (large leafs), border (small leafs) and accent strip (dark blue). Choosing the fabric combinations for pillowcases is my favorite part.

Tacked up on the bulletin board in my sewing room sits my trusty, hand-scribbled, cheat sheet of cutting sizes for burp cloths and pillowcases. I whipped it off and made the standard size pillowcase at the top right.

Here is the finished pillowcase. I am now inspired to make more of these and start using up my stash of one yard lengths of fabric. As long as the main body fabric is not directional, it only takes ¾ yard; otherwise the main body requires 1¼ yards so the print does not run sideways when deployed on the bed.

Perhaps by at least getting some stitching under my fingers, I will be motivated to FMQ my Whirligiggles top I prepared for quilting in November 2017. It is one of the large projects I cited for completion in my 2019 Quilting Goals (1/15/19). I had completed the assembly of this top in February 2017. By making it public in this blog I may be shamed into working on it. We shall see.