My Kid's New Pillowcase!

Perhaps I should've made this into a little tutorial? I guess I think of these things too late. But there are tutorials out there on pillowcases such as this one and also on piping. So you should be ok. Even if I did my pillowcase differently, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Down at the end of this post, I'll throw in a few tips on how I put mine together, if you care to stick around.

So a little background. My son has never seen Star Wars, and has only started getting into it because they are on Lego boxes. And he has just gotten into Legos after someone gave him a cool box of them this summer for his birthday (ah, marketing). Anyway, long story short, my son and his dad think Star Wars is really cool, talk about it a lot (without revealing too much, of course) and the soundtrack is playing 24/7. So, with so much excitement going on in regard to this new love-interest, and kindergarten having just started as well, I thought, I want to make him something. A little celebratory gift that says I love you, I'm proud of you, and I really am interested in the Force too. Nothing says that better than a new set of pillowcases. (Great idea, right?) The first pillowcase showed up, casually, on his bed after school one day and he was really very excited. Really.

To get this nifty gift ready, I picked up a couple 1/2 yards of Star Wars fabric at Joann's on a recent trip, and looked in my stash for some coordinating materials. The two shades of solid blue fabrics would be perfect for my pillowcases! And what have we here? Leftover blue piping from my Emily Elizabeth dress. Excellent.

I don't have a ton of experience piping. See this and this. (There may be one or two other projects in the files.) But it's not hard, and I think it adds a lot of pizzaz to anything that it appears upon. And pillowcases can be rather plain. I didn't want to add rick-rack or pom-poms to my son's bedding, but piping - now that would be perfect.

Oh, yes? Pretty nice, I think. And boyish and a little fancy too. Doing piping on my pillowcases helped me practice my continuously developing skills, and, quite frankly, made sewing a pair of pillowcases more exciting.

My daughter wanted in on this photo session, so my son kindly gave her the Dora the Explorer pillowcase I made for him a while back so she could feel included (and so the Dora case could actually get some use...since it hasn't seen the light of day since, well, since Dora became un-cool about a year ago).

And now for a few sewing notes/tips:
1. a 1/2 yard of your favorite print is perfect for sewing one of these pillowcases.
2. use a pillowcase currently on your bed for sizing/length (take the pillow out first, of course).
3. find some coordinating fabric and cut the same width (as your cool fabric) but twice the length you want (so you can fold it over and have all the raw edges align).
4. I sewed the two raw edges of the coordinating fabric to my Star Wars fabric after attaching the piping to the Star Wars fabric (follow that?). Yes, you can still see the raw edges inside the pillowcase, but if you serge it (or sew zig-zags), it'll look better. But who's looking inside anyway?
5. I did reinforce the sides of the pillowcases with a zig-zag stitch (I had a broken needle on my serger at the time, darn it).

Well, thanks for visiting and reading all the way to the end. I hope you like my pillowcases and feel empowered to give piping a try! Oh, and the dark-blue Star Wars case - notice how it's not in any of the "action" shots? I'm saving it for a surprise. Surprises are just plain fun.

I'll be linking up with some of these parties.