Stashbusting: Pillowcases

In the name of marital harmony, one of my first projects while on maternity leave was to go through my fabric stash and thin some stuff out.

I came across this piece of fabric and immediately thought "this would've made good pillowcases" and threw it on the giveaway pile.  Then I thought, "Well why give this away when pillowcases are so easy?"

I decided to use the salvage edge for the open end of the pillowcase to avoid having to sew a raw edge on that side and save some time.  

Pillowcases are so easy - no pattern needed!  I just folded the fabric onto itself and laid a pillowcase from my stash on top of the fabric.  I left three inches extra on the selvage side to turn inside for the hem and another 5/8" on the unfolded edge for the side seam.  Then I cut around the pillow case like so:

I sewed the two raw edges.  Then I turned the selvage edge up those three inches, pinned it and stitched it into place. 

As luck would have it, I had just enough fabric for two pillowcases.  There was only about 9" of waste left.  Whoo hoo!

On the upside, I now have two new pillowcases.  

And the whole project went from start to finish in about 20 minutes.

On the downside, we don't have white or purple bedsheets to match these and our bedroom is blue and grey.  But with a newborn and a 12 month old, I don't really care what I lay my head down on these days.  I'm just grateful when those two let me actually sleep!

This project was a great way to do some stashbusting.   And a nice diversion from my next project, a dress I'm working on for date night with the husband.