Don’t you hate the price of pillow covers?  Yeah, me too. 

Are you a little dangerous with a sewing machine? Yeah, me too.

I decided to try my hand at making pillow covers/shams for our bedroom.

I purchased 2 king size pillows from Target.  $12.99 per pillow.  Nate kept trying to figure out how we could make the $2.50 pillows work.  No such luck.

I purchased the fabric from JoAnn’s. $9.99 per yard.  I was guessing that I would need a yard per pillow. (Good guess!) I used a 50% off coupon so my total was $9.99 for 2 King pillows.

I usually sew envelope style pillow covers and that is what I had originally planned to do with these pillows…until I realized that the pillow was 36” wide….the same as a yard of fabric.  I still ended up with an envelope pillow cover, I just took an easier approach than I normally do.

I cut the fabric in half so I had 1 yard for each pillow.

I hemmed one of the long sides so the envelope would have a finished edge.  (Be sure you have your Diet Dew handy if you are doing this before church on Easter morning….yes, I am crazy.)

I then placed the fabric right sides together with about 2 inches of overlap.  Place your hemmed edge on the bottom…this will place it on top when you flip the pillow cover.

I then pinned the 2 sides.  The nice thing about sewing a cover that is 36” long is that you only have 2 sides to fight your sewing machine sew.

Sew the two sides.  Turn the pillow cover right sides out.  Be sure to poke the corners out completely.

Enjoy your new pillow cover that took about 10 minutes to make…maybe less if your “helper” isn’t getting into everything in your craft room…

Envelope….

I also made a smaller version with another fabric….

 

And a better curtain shot…since the sun finally decided to shine!

Someday I’ll hopefully be all fancy with my sewing machine but until that happens…I’ll continue to find ways to cheat the expensive pillow cover situation with my beginner skills.

What’s your favorite beginner sewing project?  Or do sewing machines scare you?