I made a pillow case!

Yes, I'm very excited about this project! I was very intimidated at first, but after making a bunch of pillow cases, I started getting the hang of it. I followed the "Basic" style pillow tutorial at DIY Bed Pillow Cases: 3 sizes and 3 different styles and I found it really good in terms of instructions and sewing finish. As usual, I made mistakes along the way (somehow didn't sew straight, measured incorrectly, my first few times doing french seams were horrible causing me to redo my stitches, sigh). But practice makes perfect, and look at some of the basic pillow cases I made (woo hoo!):

Per my experience, some tips I'd like to share:

• If you're just learning to sew, buy cheap fabric and start practicing with it. I bought my fabric from Fabric.com (From a past Black Friday sale at $1.99/yard!). This way if I messed up, I wouldn't feel too bad.


• Because I found measuring and cutting fabric a bit of a tedious process, I decided to make a "pattern". It wasn't fancy - just a bunch of white paper, taped together. This pattern was constructed with 1/2 of the actual measurements, because it was easier for me to fold the fabric in half, measure once, and cut. You might want to do this too. Decided to also purchase a rotary cutter and a cutting mat soon (hoping this speeds up my cutting and reduce crooked edges, etc).


• As you follow the tutorial, pause multiple times and check that your work-in-progress pillow case fits with the actual pillow you will be using. Even with the right measurements, my first pillow case came out shorter with a flat pillow, but turned out fine on a puffy pillow. Both were standard size pillows.


• The tutorial probably assumes that one already knows french seams. I didn't. So I did some research and came upon a simple but awesome teaching video on YouTube on creating french seams: 

Here's a pillow case I created that was a birthday present for a special Batman fan:

And here's another pillow case that a certain My Little Pony fan loved:

They make such cute and unique presents/home decor! Now that I'm more comfortable with this project, I'd like to try sewing different types of pillow cases, such as the Burrito or Hotdog method (don't you love the names). Would love to sew a complete bedding set (pillow cases, duvet, sheets)... hopefully one day! Now go create some cute pillow cases!