Pillow Shams

Part 3 of Master Bedding
Part 1 The Whole Bed
Part 2: Lattice Pillow Tutorial

This isn't a tutorial, but just explains how I made the pillow shams.  It's kind of a sloppy version, but works and who's to know except you?

Basically it's just a big envelope pillow cover. But you sew around the rectangle 2.5" from the finished seam edge to make the sham border.

So to make a large pillow cover, I measured 5" larger (than a normal pillow cover) in each direction  when I cut the rectangles.

You hem the two edges of the back pieces, then sew the front and overlapped back pieces right sides together.

At this point you'll have a typical envelope pillow cover, just too big for your pillow.  Press the seam to lay nice and flat, then sew another rectangle, 2.5" from the seam edge.   So now your pillow cover fits your pillow and has the border...

 ...BUT you do have these unsightly openings where the envelope overlap/ seam is in the sham border on the back.  But these little gaps didn't seem that big of a deal for me, so I went with the quick and easy way.

The next pillow isn't a big deal, but I just hate normal pillowcases with the one end open.  It seems the pillow falls out, or gets twisted weird.  So while I was at it, I made new envelope pillowcases for our bigger pillows we sleep on.  Rather than buy fabric, I just bought a white twin flat sheet from Walmart for $4.00.

For these pillows I cut an 18" wide vertical strip off of one side of the sheet.  Then I was able to use the thick top hem of the sheet as a back envelope piece, then save the thin hem at the bottom of the sheet for the other envelope back piece.  The pillow front I used from the middle section of the strip.

For the 2 king sized pillowcases, it used just over half the sheet, so I have plenty of extra white sheet for other projects.  But the best part is our pillows can't fall out of the pillowcases anymore!