a tutorial & stitch along {pillowcase skirt}

I’ve had this pillowcase for a while and was going to make a pillowcase dress, but the other day decided to try my hand at writing a tutorial for a pillowcase skirt. I made a skirt out of vintage & thrifted cases a while ago, but only having one case this time decided to add a little something to the bottom. It was also time to participate in the monthly feeling stitchy stitchalong so I decided to make a little apron for the skirt and “kill two birds with one stone” as they say. The instructions are for a size 5 skirt, but can easily be adapted for smaller sizes. So here goes…

a pillowcase skirt tutorial:

First, gather up all your materials:
- one standard pillowcase
- 3/4 yard of coordinating tulle
- coordinating ric rac
- thread
- roughly a fat quarter of white (or coordinating) fabric for the apron and embroidery
- embroidery pattern (found here)
- 3/4″ wide elastic
- small piece of interfacing

Lay out your case on a cutting mat and measure 14″ from the open end up and cut across.

After cutting you should have something like this:

Next you are ready to cut your tulle strips. Strips are cut width of fabric x 5″ wide. I folded my width of fabric in half to fit it on my mat for cutting. Cut 3 strips.

**This is where I did things a little backwards. Typically you would now sew your 3 strips together short ends to short ends to make a large loop and then baste. I opted to indent my basting a little bit and make the loop last.**

Next baste your 3 tulle strips together. This is where going slow pays off in order to keep all the layers on top of each other while you sew. After you sew, pull the basting a little bit to make it fit around the inside of the case. After fitting it almost together, sew the short ends together to make a loop.

When you get ready to sew the tulle strip to the case, match up the basting stitch with the hem stitch on the case.

Flip the skirt right side out and you should have something like this. The tulle should hang down about an inch below the case bottom.

Here’s an inside view of the tulle strip after it has been sewn on:

Now you are going to cover up the hem seam and seam from the tulle strip with some ric rac. Line up your ric rac on the seam and you can go ahead and measure out how much you need and sew!

Your skirt bottom should now look something like this:

Next it’s time to measure the apron pieces and trace your embroidery. (obviously this picture was taken after I embroidered. Just use your imagination)

Cut 2 apron pieces 7.5″ x 9.5″ and using a water soluble pen, trace your embroidery design and sew.

After you are finished with your embroidery, clip the long ends of your threads on the back and “seal” your embroidery by ironing on a small piece of interfacing. If embroidery isn’t your thing, you could always cut two pieces of coordinating fabric and use those as your apron piece.

Next, you will add ric rac to the edges of the apron pieces and sew them together. Sandwich the ric rac in between the apron pieces, right sides facing. Sew the two long sides and bottom, leaving the top open.

Turn right side out, use a chop stick to poke out the corners and press. You should have something like this (sorry it’s blurry):

Now you are going to line up your apron piece with the top of your skirt. Mine measured roughly 6.5 inches on each side.

Pin apron in place.

Now it is time to finish the top edge of your skirt. If you have a serger, use your serger to finish the top, while at the same time attaching the apron piece. If you do not have a serger, you can use a zig zag stitch to finish the top edge and attach the apron OR you can baste the apron piece and fold the top down 1/4″ and press.

Now it is time to make the casing for the elastic.

Fold down the top 1″ and press. You might want to pin the apron piece in place so that it doesn’t shuffle around while sewing the casing. Make sure to leave an opening in the casing to insert the elastic.