CREATE: Easy Cross Pillowcase - The Minimal-ish Mama

This pillowcase took me about an hour to make from start to finish. Since I have two pillow inserts from Ikea to use, I designed my own pillow cases using navy, mustard yellow, and a patterned Vera Bradley fabric, sent to me by wholeport.com. Here’s my two pattern designs:

I decided to start with the easy one first. This pattern makes a 20×20 inch pillow case. To all the measurements in the diagram, you’ll need to add half an inch for your seam allowances. So, you’ll need:

Four 8.5″x8.5″ pieces (mine are yellow)
Two 4.5″x4.5″ pieces (mine are Vera Bradley navy patterned fabric, c/o Wholeport.com)
One 4.5″x 20.5″ inch piece (the long piece down the middle)
One 20.5″x 21.5 piece for the back. The reason there’s an extra inch on the back is to create a flap for closing the pillow. If you’re using a zipper, you won’t need that extra inch.

1. Cut out your fabric, and arrange it like it will look when it’s finished. Now, we’re going to sew each row, starting top to bottom on the left.

2. Sew the top left yellow piece to the blue cross piece, right sides together. Then, add the bottom yellow corner piece, sewing right sides together. Left row done!

3. Repeat with the right side, sewing the yellow corner piece to the middle blue cross piece, right sides together, and then add the bottom piece, right sides together.

4. Place the middle strip on top of the left row: right sides together. Like so:

Sew them together. Open it up, and it should look like this:

5. Now, place the right row on top, right sides together. Sew the right side to the middle.

The front is done!

7. Since I planned to close my pillow with snaps, here’s what I did. I made a small hem at the top of the front piece of the pillowcase, and a small hem at the top of the back.

8. With right sides together, I sewed around the pillowcase. The back is about an inch longer than the front. The plan is to add snaps eventually, if having it open gets annoying.