Easiest DIY Pillow Cover EVER!

I know what you’re thinking.  There are TONS of DIY pillow cover tutorials out there.  But I recently had to sew six (SIX!) pillow covers for my daughter’s bedroom in one evening and I discovered a few tricks along the way that will make you want to sew your own envelope pillow cover STAT!  Let’s do this!!

Step 1

Buy your pillow form first.  This will dictate how much fabric you need!  I like this one from IKEA which is soft and the size is perfect for the patio chair I’m making this pillow cover for.

Step 2

Purchase your fabric. For a 26″ x 26″ pillow form, 1 yard of fabric is plenty.

Step 3

We need to cut 3 pieces out for an envelope pillow.

Time Saving Tip #1 – DON’T MEASURE!  Eye-balling it is sufficient!

For the first piece, place your pillow form on your fabric and cut around the pillow form eye-balling a 2″ seam allowance.

Step 4

For piece #2, you’ll want the width to be about half of the width of piece #1.  For piece #3, you’ll want the width to be about 3/4 of the width of piece #1.  Again no measuring, eyeball it!

Time Saving Tip #2 – Find the selvage edge of your fabric!  The selvage is the prefinished bit which you’ll find along at least one side of your fabric.  For pieces #2 and 3, make sure that edge of each piece that will be visible once your pillow is turned inside-out is the selvage edge. That way you won’t have to hem those pieces.  Believe me this saves a boat-load of time!!!

Step 5

Pin all your pieces, right sides together.

Step 6

Time Saving Tip #3 – Before sewing, trim your pinned pieces to the same width and length so that no extra fabric is showing.  This ensures all three pieces are sewn together. I can’t tell you how many times I go to sew pinned pieces of fabric only to discover that I missed a piece and I had to re-do it all!

Step 7

This is the fun part!  Sew up all 4 sides and flip the pillow inside out.

And you’re done!!!  (As mentioned, this one is destined for our little balcony off of our bedroom, subject to husband approval.  Apparently that’s “his” space – ha!) 😉

The total time it took for me to make this pillow cover was about 15 minutes, start-to-finish.  Not only was it easy to make but it’s so quick to do!  If you’ve been shopping for a pillow and can’t seem to find what you’re looking for, DIY-ing is the way to go!

Now go, sew up some beauties and report back!