Joyfully Jensen: Envelope pillow case

Ah how I love to just wing it with some things. Not the things that really matter but the little bitty things I don't mind so much. Of course I had no technical plan when I decided to make some pillow cases, and just went along doing my own thing, kind of.

First I did a few searches for an "easy pillow case" and came across the envelope pillow case. Now a couple of the tutorials were all precise with measurements of how many inches your pillow is and how many inches of fabric you need and how much you need for seam allowance, blah blah blah. Um why not just wrap the dang fabric around the pillow to get your measurements that way? I don't want to use math unless I absolutely have to. I just bought 1/2 yard of 4 different fabrics and figured it would be plenty enough. It was.

So I laid the fabric on the floor wrong side out and over lapped the edges.

I made sure that the shortest piece was near where the top of my pillow was going to be so there wouldn't be a huge amount of fabric you would have to wrangle over the pillow. So the flap you see on the bottom is going to be the the top, got it?

Then after I measured where my seams needed to go by laying my pillow on top of the fabric I placed pins where I wanted the seam. One side of the fabric wasn't cut so straight so I actually drew a line with my fabric pencil and yard stick. I suggest doing that if you can't eyeball a straight line.

Now you head for your sewing machine. I know this is all pretty complicated and is probably hard for you to keep up. Not. Awww, how cute is my cabinet of a machine in the poorly lit corner of our living room even though there are 3 HUGE windows right behind where I sit. Oh and a Barbie beach house is back there too. The pillow is up there because 2 of the pillows I was making the cases for were all crooked so I took the stuffing out and made straight cases out of some old pillowcases I had stashed away.

Make your seam on the 2 sides of the fabric...

Trim off the excess fabric (I was left with about 1/4 inch)...

Flip that sucker right side out, stuff a pillow in there and voila!!! Envelope pillow case! I kinda went to town and made 4 of them. The orange and green are duck cloth and the other 2 are just regular fabric (cotton I am guessing).

Some of them I just left the edge the way it came off the bolt since it was already uh, Finished? Sealed? I don't know what you call it. I actually had to cut the fabric for the yellow pillow since I used a smaller pillow for that one so I actually had to finish the edge on that one. The orange one had a nice fringe to the edge so I left that one alone too.

Me likey a lot. I know I complained about "yellow" the other day but I just loved the polka dot fabric. I like yellow I just don't like it on my living room walls anymore. It's hard to see but all the colors tie in with the little candles on the right side of the bed.