You can make your own DIY pillow cover in just 10 minutes with this super simple method! Perfect for beginner sewers!
Can you believe it used to take me like an hour to make myself a DIY pillow cover? I knew it wasn’t supposed to be considered a big, complicated project, but it kinda was. And you know I’m not a big fan of complicated. Back in the dark ages, I used to cut out three different pieces of fabric for each envelop pillow cover that I made, and that gave me three chances to mess it up on each pillow! And I did mess it up often, of course.
Until.
Until, a few years ago when I agreed to do a project using these beautiful Premier Prints fabrics from Online Fabric Store and decided I wanted to make some new pillows to help me with the living room happy-fication I had been working on at the time. And I told them I wanted to make a bunch of them. So they sent me the supplies and then I had to do it and couldn’t wimp out of making them all. So I hummed and I hawed, and then I got smart!
And I got some pretty great pillows of the deal too, don’t you think?
I still use these DIY pillow covers all the time and they’ve held up perfectly well even after being used all over the house and during many games of “the floor is lava.”Anyone who has kids knows exactly the game I’m talking about. 🙂
Here’s how I made them in (I’m not kidding) 10 minutes flat! Well, 10 minutes each, of course. 🙂
Making a 10 Minute DIY Pillow Cover
I started out by cutting out just one single piece of fabric per pillow and quickly ironing it in these few key places. These were the measurements to make a 16″ pillow. Add a few inches accordingly for larger pillows. I just made sure the center portion was 16″ and didn’t worry too much about the two outside pieces. The 36″ inch length overall ensures a nice overlap. And I didn’t mark it down on the image above, but the fabric is 17″ wide.
I folded it together with the wrong side facing out and sewed ONLY the two side seams. Sewing the folded over bits that make the opening is completely unnecessary and leaving this part out cuts your sewing time in HALF! Trust me, they stay put and you’d never know they’re not sewn. I feel so sneaky.
And proud of myself. Kind of how Chuck looks in this picture. 🙂
The Resulting 10 Minute DIY Pillow Cover
So then it was 40 minutes later and I had 4 pillow covers that I loved. But the trick is this: If you’re going to go to all of this (sorta) trouble, you want your pillows to look their best, right? The thing that really makes the difference between really great professional pillows and just so-so pillows is the type of insert that you use.
A great down pillow form (or down alternative pillow form) brings the pillows to life and makes them fluffy, comfy, and wonderfully chop-able. Please tell me you love a good pillow chop as much as I do.
That’s the stuff. It makes all the difference.
Also, having a dog that matches your decor really helps, but that will be on next week’s lesson. I’m kidding. Maybe.
Until then, that’s how you can DIY yourself some great pillows lickety split! If you’re like me and didn’t know this before, now ya do!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.