No Exposed Seams Pillowcase Tutorial

You all need to know that I went to the gym every day so far. I am excited to weigh in on Monday at WW. After the gym last night PTM and I went back to her house and we did a photo tutorial on how to make a pillowcase with no exposed seams. I took a lot of pictures so here goes and I hope it all makes sense!

The sizes of fabric I am using are for a standard sized pillow. You will use a 36" piece for the body if you are making king size pc. Also VERY IMPORTANT, make certain you back stitch to secure your stitching as you are making these. You wouldn't want your pc to pull apart. We washed and pressed all the fabric before beginning. PTM told me I *had* to do this and for me this was the most tedious part of the whole thing! I NEVER wash my fabric first. Variable shrinkage can cause a real problem with these, so ...just DO IT!

First you will need at least 2 different fabrics (3 if you make the accent). We used 3 and did the accent. You will cut the body of the pc at 27" X WOF (width of fabric). The cuff will be cut
9" X WOF. You can cut your accent piece anything from ~ 1 1/4" - 2" depending how wide you would like your accent to be. We cut ours at 1 1/4" to begin. after you have them cut you will lay them on top of each other (folded in half) to cut off the salvages on all the fabric. You do this at the same time so the widths are all the same! Clever, eh? Pauline (PTM) told me about that! We had already cut ours so I used a different one to show you how we did that.

Take the accent and fold it in half, wrong sides together, just like you do binding and press. Open your cuff and lay your accent piece on top of the right of the cuff. matching raw edges, fold facing you. (If you are not using a accent piece, skip this step!)


Then you will take your body of the PC and line up the raw edge to the cuff/accent piece with the right side down. Next you pin all the layers together across the top.

PTM is big on pinning. It helps everything stay in place.

Now you bring the bottom of the pc up near the top where you just pinned. Not all the way though and then you roll the rest until you are about half way or a little more up the cuff, like in the photo on the right

Then you bring the raw edge of your cuff up over your roll and match it to the pinned top. You will then make sure all the edges are even and pin them all together. We just moved the pins we had already pinned with from the underneath area and pinned all the layers together.

It should look like this photo.

You will then take your sausage to the sewing machine and sew a 1/4" seam along the pinned edge. We used a walking foot to keep all the layers feeding evenly. This was especially important when I did a flannel one.

This part is kinda fun. You will pull the inside out of the tube. It is like magic, you'll see!


Here you see the front and the back of the cuff area, no raw edges on the front or the back!

Take the pc to your iron and give it a good press from the back at the seam line, turn it over and do the same from the front side and then press the crease into the cuff where it is folded along the edge. We did it this way so there didn't end up being any unwanted creases pressed into the cuff.

You will need to take your pc and fold it with the wrong sides together (wst), pin and sew a 1/4" seam along the long edge (side) of the pc. I like to begin sewing at the cuff end so I can make sure my cuff seam matches. I would not like it if they didn't match when I was finished!!

After you are finished sewing this seam you may see some stray threads, use your rotary cutter and ruler to trim them. If you don't you may catch them in the next part and will see them on the finished edge of your pc. If you don't have any, you don't have to trim.

You will then fold your pc right sides together (rst) and pin and sew a 1/2" seam down the side you just did the quarter inch seam. Again, I like to begin at the cuff end and sew down. It is kind of bulky (especially when you use flannel ) where the cuff/accent seams meet. You may have to push/pull a little to get over the "hump"of seams. You are basically making a "French seam" and enclosing your quarter inch seam inside of it.

This is what your side seam will look like on the wrong side.

You will now do a repeat of this process with the bottom of the pc. Fold the pc WST and sew a 1/4" seam, trim if there are loose threads, turn and press. At this point you will have RST and sew a 1/2" seam over the quarter inch seam you just sewed. Where the side enclosed seam and the where you will now sew meet you get this weird little fold. I tried to show you how this looks in the photo on the right. Just play with it a little bit and make it play nice because you will just be sewing right over it.

In these pics you can see that PTM started sewing right at that place rather than at the other end. She sewed with the folded area on the bottom.

Here you can see what it looks like once sewn, from the wrong side.

Now comes the TA_DA moment. Are you ready?? Turn your pc right side out...


And...TA-DA!!! You have a beautiful new pillowcase you made all by yourself!! Who would want store bought when these are so darned easy!!

I know you want to know this. The accent is loose, not sewn down, see, that's my own hand showing you that!


I hope this has been helpful! (Or at least interesting!!) If you have any questions, please email me and I will do my best to help you. I think you should be able to make these in about 20 minutes, once you make one. There are several places taking pc donations right now too. So make them as gifts, make them to donate, make them for yourself, whatever. I am using up some fabric I bought that I am no longer in love with and will probably donate some and give some to friends.

Please let me know if you make some and if this was a useful tutorial! I have a few photos from PTM's that I will share with you tomorrow. Have fun making pillowcases now!!