Easy pillow covers

I found some great fabric I wanted to use in the nursery so I decided to make a couple of pillows for our glider. My friend Kate taught me how to do this, and it's super easy--no zippers involved! (Though I do plan to learn how to sew a zipper...eventually.)

Here's what one of the finished pillows looks like:

Gather these materials:

• fabric
• pillow
• pins
• iron
• scissors/rotary cutter

I was making two pillows, both sized 14x14. You need three pieces of fabric for this type of pillowcase--one for the front and two that overlap on the back. I planned to sew with a 1/2 inch seam allowance so I cut my front piece to be 15x15. The size of the back pieces depends on how fluffy your pillow is. I've made these before where my pieces just barely met in the back, so now I cut them larger than I initially think I'll need. I cut two 15x10 pieces, and those worked out perfectly. I had one pillow that was fluffier than the other, and both turned out great.

You should probably iron your fabric before you start, but since my ironing board is finicky--sometimes it just collapses in on itself--I iron on a towel on the table. Because of this and being so pregnant, I'd rather iron less fabric, so I did my cutting first, then ironed the pieces before sewing.

Next, you'll want to turn under one edge of each back piece, pin it in place and sew it. This will give you finished edges where you put the pillow in. Do this with one of the longer edges, for me a 15-inch edge.

I sew these pieces as close to the edge as I can.

After you have one finished edge for each back piece, you'll put the three pieces together and pin them all the way around. You want right sides together for this (see progression):

top piece, right side up

 one back piece, right side down

add the second back piece, right side down, overlapping the first back piece

Pin and sew all the way around--again, I did a 1/2-inch seam allowance. Trim the corners for a neater "inside-out flip."

Finally, flip the fabric inside out and stuff your pillow in!

 See the gap?

I made one polka-dotted pillow and another using brown houndstooth. Because we're Alabama fans (think houndstooth and elephants), I wanted to add elephants to the houndstooth fabric. Though Bama colors are crimson and white, our nursery is green, brown and teal. Here's what I came up with:

 I cut a rectangle of this green elephant fabric...

 then turned the edges under and ironed them down...

 then pinned the elephants onto the top piece of houndstooth fabric...

 then sewed the elephants on!

(You would do this before putting all three pieces together, btw.)

Finished pillows!

Project Update:

Remember the shutter I cleaned up for our travel wall project? I finally got all the letters I needed from Michael's, stained them with leftover floor stain from last year, finished the shutter and Andrew hung the beginnings of our wall on Sunday: