Unit 3: A Pillowcase

Measuring the Pillow and Deciding the Finished Size

A pillowcase is the friendliest project in the house. It is four straight lines, no curves, no fitting, no pattern tissue to trace. But it is also unforgiving in one way: if the finished tube is an inch too narrow, the pillow will strain against the seams every night until they give. So the work begins where all good sewing begins, with a tape measure and a little arithmetic.

Measure the pillow, not the old case

Pull a case off the bed and you will be tempted to lay it flat and copy it. Resist. That case has been washed sixty times, shrunk in two directions, and stretched over a pillow that has since flattened. Measure the pillow itself instead. Lay it on a table, let it settle, and measure across the width at the middle without compressing it. Then measure the length the same way.

In the United States, bed pillows come in three common sizes. A standard pillow is about 20 inches by 26 inches. A queen is 20 by 30. A king is 20 by 36. European pillows are often square or near it, with 40 by 80 centimeters being a common shape, and those need their own arithmetic rather than an American case cut down. Measure anyway. Pillows vary by maker, and an old feather pillow that has been beaten flat behaves nothing like a new foam one.

Add for loft and for tuck

The pillow is not flat, and a case cut to the exact footprint of a flat pillow will not close over a lofty one. Two allowances matter.

The first is loft, the height of the pillow when it lies at rest. A thin down pillow may stand an inch and a half tall; a firm foam one may stand six. The taller the pillow, the more width the case must give up to going over the top and down the other side. Press your hand gently on the pillow and measure its resting height, then plan on adding roughly half that height to the finished width of the case.

The second is tuck. A case that ends exactly where the pillow ends will slide off in the night. Commercial cases run four to five inches longer than the pillow for this reason. That extra length is what folds back under the pillow and keeps the case put.

For a standard 20 by 26 pillow, a finished case measuring about 20 inches wide and 30 inches long is the tested, ordinary answer, and it is what commercial standard cases measure. Add four inches of length for a queen and ten for a king. If your pillow is unusually lofty, take the width to 21 inches instead of squeezing it.

Turning the finished size into cut pieces

Once you know the finished size, every seam allowance and hem you plan has to be added back on. Nothing else in this project causes as much grief as forgetting that step.

A plain hemmed case is cut as one long rectangle, folded in half across its width so the fold becomes one finished side. For a standard case sewn from ordinary quilting cotton, cut a rectangle 41 inches wide by 34 and a half inches long. Do the arithmetic with me so the numbers are yours and not mine. The width is twice the finished width plus one seam allowance: 20 plus a half, doubled, is 41, and folding it in half gives two panels of 20 and a half, one of which is a fold and the other a half inch seam, for a finished 20 inches. The length is the finished 30 inches, plus a half inch for the seam across the closed end, plus four inches of hem allowance at the mouth, which turns twice at two inches to give a two inch finished hem. Thirty plus a half plus four is 34 and a half. The pocket that results measures roughly 20 by 30 inches on the inside, which swallows a 20 by 26 pillow with the four inches of tuck the earlier arithmetic asked for. Write these numbers on a scrap of paper and tape it to your machine. You will want them again.

Why the numbers deserve respect

Scripture does not treat careful work as beneath notice. Moses prayed that God would establish the work of our hands, and he prayed it twice in a single line, as though the establishing mattered enough to ask again. A case cut square and sized honestly will still be in service in fifteen years. A case guessed at will pull out at a corner by spring. Measuring is not fussiness; it is the first act of making something that lasts.

Before you cut anything, check your tape against a metal ruler. Cloth tapes stretch with age, and a tape that has lost half an inch over its length will quietly ruin every project you own.

Choosing the Cloth and Washing It Before You Cut

The cloth you pick will be against a face for eight hours a night, several nights a week, for years. That is a harder service than most garments see. It is worth ten minutes of thought at the shelf.

What sleeps well

Plain woven cotton is the ordinary and excellent choice. Quilting cotton, sold at 42 to 44 inches wide, is dense enough to wear well and comes in every color a household could want. Percale, a tightly woven plain-weave cotton sold as sheeting, is cooler and crisper and is what most commercial bedding is made from. Both take a hot iron, both soften with washing, and both breathe.

Cotton and polyester blends behave differently. They resist wrinkling, resist staining, and shrink very little, which makes them practical for a household that irons nothing. They also hold heat against a sleeper more than pure cotton does, which some people find close and stuffy. Neither choice is wrong. Know what you are buying.

Avoid loose, open weaves and anything that feels thin when you crumple a corner in your fist. A slack weave will pill where a face rubs it and will pull at the seams within a year. Avoid knits entirely for a first case; they stretch as they feed under the presser foot and the seams will ripple.

Flax, worked into linen, has clothed sleepers for thousands of years. Isaiah speaks plainly of those who work in fine flax and those who weave networks, as of a settled and respected trade, and Exodus names the weaver and the embroiderer among those God filled with wisdom of heart. Linen makes a superb, cool, long-lived case. It also wrinkles freely and costs more, so it is usually a second project rather than a first.

Wash it first, and mean it

One hundred percent cotton shrinks in its first hot wash, commonly on the order of three to five percent, though the exact amount depends on the weave and the finish the mill applied. Three percent of a 40 inch cut is more than an inch. If you cut first and wash later, the case that fit the pillow on Tuesday will not close over it on Saturday, and the seams will be under strain from then on.

So prewash. Run the fabric through the machine on the hottest wash the finished case will ever see, and dry it in the dryer on the same heat you will use later. You are not cleaning it; you are getting the shrinking over with while the cloth is still a rectangle and nothing is at stake. Blends shrink far less, but running them through once costs nothing and tells you how the cloth will behave.

Cut yardage frays badly in the wash. Clip a small triangle off each of the four corners before it goes in, or run a wide zigzag along the cut ends. That saves you untangling a rope of loose threads later.

Press the fabric while it is still slightly damp, or press it dry with steam. Cotton takes a hot iron, around 400 degrees Fahrenheit on most dials; polyester blends want a lower setting, nearer 350. Set the iron to the most delicate fiber in the cloth, not the toughest. If you are unsure, test on a corner you will cut off anyway.

Thread and needle

Use a good general-purpose thread. A 40-weight polyester is the ordinary workhorse for bedding and holds up to repeated hot washing. Heavy decorative threads in 30 or 20 weight belong in topstitching done deliberately, not in seams; run through a normal machine at normal tension they will fight you and the stitch will look loose and loopy.

For quilting cotton or percale, a universal needle in size 80/12 is right. Put a fresh one in before you start. A needle costs a few cents and a dull one causes skipped stitches, snagged threads, and small permanent holes in the cloth.

Buy a little more fabric than the arithmetic says. Two extra inches lets you square a crooked cut end without losing the project.

Straight Grain, Square Corners, and a Safe Rotary Cut

Cloth is not paper. It is a grid of threads, and it behaves differently depending on which way that grid runs. A pillowcase cut off the grid will twist on the pillow no matter how carefully it was sewn, and no amount of pressing will straighten it. Getting the cut right is most of the battle.

The three directions in a woven cloth

Every woven fabric has warp threads running the length of the bolt and weft threads crossing them. The warp direction, running parallel to the selvage, is called the lengthwise grain. It is the most stable direction; it barely gives at all. The weft, running from selvage to selvage, is the crosswise grain, and it has a small amount of give. Anything at forty-five degrees to both is the bias, and the bias stretches generously.

For a pillowcase, cut on the straight grain. Let the length of the case run along either the lengthwise or crosswise grain, and keep every cut edge parallel or square to the threads. A piece cut even a few degrees off will pull toward the bias as you sew and will finish as a subtle parallelogram. That is the twist you see in cheap bedding.

Isaiah's mention of those who work in fine flax and weave networks is a passing detail in a hard passage, but it tells us plainly that weaving was a known, established craft with its own workers long before any of us picked up a needle. The grid you are about to cut is very old.

Squaring the end

Fabric comes off the bolt cut by a clerk with scissors, and it is almost never square. Fix that before you measure anything.

The surest method on plain cotton is to tear it. Snip an inch into the cut end near the selvage, take a firm grip on either side of the snip, and pull sharply. The cloth will rip along a single weft thread, which is by definition perfectly on grain. Press the torn edge flat, because tearing ruffles it slightly. Some tightly woven percales do not tear cleanly; do not force it.

The alternative is to pull a thread. Clip the edge, catch one crosswise thread with a pin, and draw it out. It will gather the fabric as it comes; keep easing the gathers along until the thread pulls free or breaks, then cut along the visible gap it left. Slow, but exact.

Once one end is square, fold the fabric selvage to selvage and see whether the corners meet. If they do not, the cloth was pulled off grain in finishing, and a good hard press with steam while tugging the short diagonal will usually bring it back.

Cutting with a rotary cutter

A rotary cutter and a self-healing mat cut cleanly through several layers and give a truer edge than shears on long straight runs. Lay the fabric flat on the mat, place a wide acrylic ruler along the line, and press down firmly on the ruler with your whole spread hand.

Keep the fingers of that hand well back from the ruler's edge. The blade is a razor on a wheel, and it will follow the ruler right over a fingertip that is hanging past it. Cut away from your body, not toward it. Close the guard the instant you set the cutter down, every single time, without exception, and never leave a cutter on the floor or a chair. A blade that skips or drags is dull and needs changing; forcing a dull blade is how people get hurt.

If you would rather use shears, use good ones and cut with long strokes, sliding the lower blade along the table rather than lifting the fabric.

What a good cut looks like

Lay your cut rectangle on the table and fold it corner to corner. Both diagonals should match. Fold it in half each way; the edges should lie together without one riding out past the other. If a corner is off by more than an eighth of an inch, trim it now. Every error you leave in the cutting has to be lived with in the sewing.

A Deep Double-Turned Hem for the Open End

The mouth of a pillowcase takes more abuse than any other part of it. Hands push a pillow in, hands pull it out, and the edge is dragged over the pillow's corners several times a week. A single-turned hem with a raw edge inside will fray through in a year. A double-turned hem lasts as long as the cloth.

What a double-turned hem is

You fold the raw edge to the wrong side once, then fold again by the same amount, so that the raw edge is buried in the second fold. One line of stitching through all three layers holds it. Nothing raw is left anywhere, on either face, and the hem is three layers thick where it needs to be strongest.

Isaiah's picture of line upon line is a picture of how skill is actually built and, conveniently, of how a hem is actually made. One fold, then another fold on top of it, then one steady line of stitching. Here a little, there a little.

Pressing the folds

Work at the ironing board, not at the machine. Pressing is what makes hemming easy; anyone who tries to fold and feed at the same time will produce a wavy hem.

For a case cut with four inches of hem allowance, turn two inches to the wrong side and press the fold hard. Then turn the folded edge over another two inches and press again. You now have a two inch finished hem with the raw edge sealed inside.

Measure as you go. A hem gem, a slotted metal gauge, or a plain seam gauge set to two inches will keep you honest across forty inches of fabric. Set the gauge against the fold every four or five inches, not just at the two ends. A hem that starts at two inches and drifts to two and a quarter will look crooked when the case is on the bed even though nobody can say why.

Press with the iron set for the fiber: full heat for all-cotton, a lower setting for a blend. Lift and set the iron down rather than dragging it along the fold, because dragging pushes the cloth and stretches the edge. Steam helps cotton hold a crease. A shot of steam and then a few seconds of the iron's weight will set a fold that stays folded while you carry it to the machine.

Pin sparingly, or use clips. Two dozen pins in a hem are worse than six, because each pin lifts the cloth slightly and lets it shift.

Stitching it down

Fit a universal 80/12 needle and thread the machine with 40-weight polyester. Set a straight stitch at 2.5 millimeters, which is the ordinary length for seams and hems in medium-weight cotton. Shorter looks cramped and is hard to unpick; longer will not hold the hem flat under a sleeper.

Sew from the wrong side, with the hem facing up so you can see the inner fold. Run the line about an eighth of an inch in from that inner folded edge. That eighth inch is what keeps the stitching close enough to trap the fold and far enough in that it never wanders off the edge.

Backstitch three or four stitches at the start, sew all the way around, and overlap the beginning by about half an inch before backstitching again. Do not simply stop; a hem that is not locked at both ends will pull open at the very place the sleeper's hand grabs it.

When it goes wrong

If the hem waves and ripples, you stretched it as you sewed. Cotton has a little give on the crosswise grain, and pulling the fabric through instead of letting the feed dogs move it will lengthen the edge. Guide the fabric lightly from behind, never tug it.

If the stitching runs off the inner fold in places, your two folds were uneven. Unpick that stretch, press the fold true, and sew again.

If the needle skips stitches, the needle is dull or the wrong size. Change it. If the thread loops on the underside, the top thread has come out of the tension discs; rethread with the presser foot raised, which is the only position in which the discs are open.

Give the finished hem a last press, and it is done.

Straight Seams: Needle, Stitch Length, and Locking the Ends

Two seams close a pillowcase: one long side and one bottom end. That is all. Because there are so few of them, each one has to be right, and a pillowcase is the perfect place to learn what a truly straight, well-anchored seam feels like under your hands.

Set the machine before you set the fabric

Put in a fresh universal needle in size 80/12. That size is matched to quilting cotton and percale: fine enough not to leave holes, stout enough not to deflect. A needle that has sewn through a few projects is already rounded at the tip, and a rounded tip pushes threads aside instead of piercing them, which shows up as skipped stitches and small pulls in the weave.

Thread the machine with 40-weight polyester, top and bobbin, and use the same thread in both. Mismatched threads pull against each other and no amount of tension adjustment will settle them.

Set a straight stitch at 2.5 millimeters. Sew a test seam on two scraps of the same fabric, then look at both faces. A balanced stitch looks identical from the top and the bottom, with the threads meeting inside the layers. If loops show on the underside, the top thread is not seated in the tension discs. If loops show on top, check the bobbin is wound evenly and threaded through its own tension spring.

Seam allowance and how to hold it

Decide your seam allowance and keep it. Half an inch is a good working allowance for a plain pillowcase seam; five eighths is the standard used for garment edges and holds well because it catches enough cloth that fraying never reaches the stitching. Whichever you choose, use it on every seam in the project. Blocks and panels go wrong when one seam is taken at three eighths and the next at five eighths.

Use the marked lines on the throat plate, or lay a strip of painter's tape on the bed of the machine at your chosen distance and run the fabric edge along it. Watch the tape, not the needle. Beginners stare at the needle and steer; the seam wanders. Watch the guide instead and let your peripheral vision keep the edge on it.

Let the feed dogs pull the fabric. Your hands are there to keep the edge on the guide and to keep the layers from shifting, not to pull. Pulling stretches the seam and can bend or break the needle.

Locking the ends

Every seam must be secured at both ends or washing will open it. Backstitch three or four stitches at the beginning, sew forward, and backstitch three or four at the end. Some machines have a lock stitch button that ties several stitches in place instead; either is fine.

Do not backstitch a dozen stitches. A heavy knot of thread at the seam end is bulky, hard to unpick, and can chew the fabric.

Press every seam before crossing it with another. Set the seam first by pressing it flat exactly as sewn, which sinks the stitches into the cloth, then open or press it to one side. Unpressed seams stack into lumps at the corners and throw off every measurement after them.

What faithfulness in small things buys, and what goes wrong

A pillowcase has two seams and hardly anyone will inspect them. The Lord's words about being faithful in that which is least apply squarely here. The habits you build on a seam nobody will see are the habits that will hold up when you are setting a sleeve or turning a collar and the work does show. Nobody grows careful on the hard projects; they only find out there whether they were careful on the easy ones.

A seam that puckers on lightweight cotton usually means the tension is too tight or the stitch too short; try loosening the top tension slightly. A seam that ripples means you pulled. A seam that is straight for ten inches and then curves means you looked at the needle. A seam that opens in the wash was never locked.

The French Seam: No Raw Edge Left Inside

Most home sewers have no serger, and a plain seam allowance left raw inside a pillowcase will shed threads into the wash and gradually fray back toward the stitching. A French seam solves it with no special equipment. The raw edge is sewn inside a second seam and disappears completely. The inside of the case looks as finished as the outside, which matters in bedding because the inside is against the pillow and against the sleeper's hands every night.

Proverbs speaks of taking the dross away so that a clean vessel can come forth. That is a fair description of this technique. The stray, ragged part is not cut off and thrown out; it is enclosed, and what emerges is clean.

The first pass: wrong sides together

This is the step that feels backward, and it is where nearly every mistake happens. Put the two pieces of fabric wrong sides together, so the right sides face out, and pin along the edge you are seaming.

Sew a quarter inch from the raw edge with a 2.5 millimeter straight stitch and an 80/12 needle. Backstitch at both ends.

Now trim that seam allowance down to about an eighth of an inch. Trim evenly; a tail of fabric left long here will poke out of the finished seam as whiskers. Small sharp scissors do this better than shears.

Press, turn, and press again

Press the seam flat as sewn to sink the stitches. Then open the pieces and press the seam allowance to one side.

Turn the work so the right sides are now together, with the seam you just sewed lying along the folded edge. Roll that fold between your fingers until the stitching line sits exactly on the fold, or a hair inside it, and press it hard. This press is the whole technique. If the first seam does not sit right at the edge, the second seam will not cover it and the raw edge will peek out.

The second pass: right sides together

Sew again, this time three eighths of an inch from the folded edge. That distance is chosen deliberately: it is more than the eighth inch of trimmed allowance riding inside, so the raw edge is fully swallowed. Backstitch at both ends.

Turn the piece right side out and press the finished seam to one side. The total seam allowance consumed is five eighths of an inch, a quarter plus three eighths, so plan your cutting with that in mind.

Corners and order of work

On a pillowcase you have two seams to French: the long side and the bottom. Sew the side seam completely, French it, press it, and only then start the bottom seam. Working one at a time keeps the corner from becoming a wad of folded allowances.

At the corner where the two seams meet, the finished side seam will be about a sixteenth of an inch thick and will not lie perfectly flat under the presser foot. Walk the needle over it slowly with the handwheel rather than driving through at speed, which is what breaks needles.

What goes wrong

Whiskers of fabric showing along the seam mean the first allowance was trimmed unevenly or the second seam was too narrow. Unpick the second seam, trim again, press, and resew a hair wider.

A lumpy, thick seam means the first allowance was not trimmed at all. Trim it.

A seam sewn right sides together on the first pass yields a normal plain seam with the raw edges enclosed on the outside, which is wrong and obvious the moment you turn the work. Unpick and start over; it costs ten minutes.

A puckered French seam usually comes from pressing with too much steam and stretching the fold. Press firmly, but let the iron's weight do it rather than shoving.

Once you have sewn one, you will use it on curtains, on children's clothes, on anything sheer, for the rest of your sewing life.

The Rolled Cuff: A Band Finished With No Visible Seam

A contrast cuff turns a plain case into something worth giving away. The method below encloses every raw edge of the cuff in one pass, so the band is clean inside and out, and the seam joining it to the body is hidden within the cuff itself. Sewers call it the rolled or burrito method because of what the fabric does in the middle of it. It looks like a trick the first time and like plain sense the second.

Exodus describes craftsmen beating gold into thin plates and cutting it into wires to work into blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen. Fine detail laid into cloth is old and honorable work. A narrow strip of contrasting cotton along a cuff is a small echo of that, and it costs a quarter of a yard.

Cutting the three pieces

For a standard case, cut across the full width of the fabric, 40 inches or thereabouts:

• Body: 27 inches by 40 inches
• Cuff: 9 inches by 40 inches
• Accent trim: 2 inches by 40 inches

The cuff finishes at about four and a quarter inches deep: nine inches folded in half is four and a half, and the quarter inch seam that joins it to the body takes the remaining quarter. The accent finishes as a narrow band of roughly three quarters of an inch. For a queen, add four inches to the body length; for a king, add ten.

Press the accent strip in half lengthwise, wrong sides together, so it becomes a folded strip one inch wide with two raw edges together on one side.

Building the roll

Lay the cuff on the table right side up, long edge toward you. Place the folded accent strip on top along that long edge, raw edges matched to the cuff's raw edge. Lay the body piece on top of both, right side down, matching that same long edge. All three raw edges are now stacked and even. Pin along that edge.

Now roll. Starting from the far long edge of the body piece, roll the body up like a rug until the roll is a tube sitting just clear of the pinned edge, and the pinned edge is still open.

Take the far long edge of the cuff, the one hanging free underneath, and bring it up and over the rolled body, folding it to meet the pinned raw edges. Match all the layers and pin. The rolled body is now completely wrapped inside the cuff.

Sew that edge with a quarter inch seam allowance, an 80/12 needle, and a 2.5 millimeter stitch, backstitching at both ends. Keep the roll clear of the presser foot as you go.

Then reach into one end of the tube and pull the body out. The cuff turns right side out around the seam, the accent sits crisply at its lower edge, and there is not a raw edge anywhere. Press the cuff flat and press the accent toward the body.

Finishing the case

With the cuff done, fold the case in half, wrong sides together for the first pass, and French the side and bottom seams as before. Match the cuff seams at the fold so the band lines up across the joint. Press, turn, and press again.

What goes wrong

If a section of the body got caught in the seam, you rolled too loosely or the roll drifted under the needle. Unpick that stretch, free the body, and resew. Check by feel before you sew: run a hand along the pinned edge to confirm only the intended layers are there.

If the accent shows unevenly, its folded strip was not laid with its raw edges flush against the others. Even a sixteenth of an inch of slippage shows across forty inches.

If the cuff will not turn out, you sewed the wrong edge. Pull the stitches and check the stack order: cuff right side up, folded accent, body face down.

An Oxford Flange for Glory and for Beauty

An Oxford case is an ordinary case with a flat border standing out around its edge. The border, called a flange, lies flat on the bed and frames the pillow. It is entirely decorative, it costs almost nothing, and it turns a case into something that looks like it came from a good shop.

Exodus records that Aaron's garments were commanded to be made for glory and for beauty. Usefulness was not the only thing God asked of textile work. Beauty was named outright, as a purpose worth the labor. A homemaker who spends an extra hour on a flange is standing in a long tradition, not indulging vanity.

What a flange is and how deep to make it

The flange is simply extra fabric extending past the pillow's edge, held flat by a line of topstitching that runs where the pillow's edge falls. Everything inside the topstitching holds the pillow; everything outside it is flat border.

Common flange depths run from about two inches to four, or five to ten centimeters. Two inches is crisp and modest and launders well. Four inches is dramatic and takes noticeably more fabric. Three is a comfortable middle. Choose one and hold it on all sides, because an uneven flange is the one flaw everyone notices from the doorway.

Cutting for a flange

Take your finished case dimensions, add the flange depth wherever a flange will run, and only then add seam and hem allowances. Work it in two steps and you will not cut short. For a standard case with a three inch flange, the pocket that holds the pillow stays at about 20 by 30 inches. The flange runs down both long sides and across the closed end but not across the mouth, so the finished outer rectangle is 20 plus three plus three, or 26 inches wide, by 30 plus three, or 33 inches long. That is the finished size, not the cut size. Now add what the seams and hem will eat. The case is French seamed on both long sides and the closed end at five eighths total, so add five eighths to each of those three edges: 26 plus five eighths twice is 27 and a quarter across, and 33 plus five eighths is 33 and five eighths. The mouth is hemmed a half inch turned twice, which consumes another full inch, bringing the length to 34 and five eighths. Cut two rectangles 27 and a quarter by 34 and five eighths inches.

Two separate rectangles are better here than one folded piece. Working with two makes it far easier to keep the flange even, because you can lay them together and trim both to match.

Building it

Hem the open end of each rectangle with a narrow double-turned hem, half an inch turned twice, so the mouth is finished before assembly. Press.

Lay the two rectangles wrong sides together and pin. French the two long sides and the closed end exactly as taught before: quarter inch first pass, trim to an eighth, press, turn, three eighths second pass. The French seam is worth the trouble here because the flange edge is visible from both faces and a raw allowance would show at the fold.

Press the whole case flat and square. Now mark the topstitching line. Measure in from the finished edge by your chosen flange depth, three inches for our example, and mark with chalk or a hera marker along both long sides and the closed end. Check the marks against a ruler in several places before you sew.

Topstitch on that line through both layers with a 2.5 millimeter stitch and an 80/12 needle. Some sewers lengthen slightly, to 3 millimeters, so the topstitching reads as a deliberate decorative line. Sew slowly and pivot exactly at each corner with the needle down and the presser foot lifted.

The mouth end of the case has no seam to topstitch across, so run the topstitching from the hemmed edge along one side, around the closed end, and back to the hemmed edge on the other side, backstitching where it starts and stops.

Keeping it flat

Press the flange firmly from both faces. A flange that will not lie flat is almost always a sign that the topstitching pulled one layer tighter than the other. Sew with a light hand and, on slippery cotton sateen, baste the two layers together inside the flange area first with long stitches you remove afterward.

If a corner puckers, you pivoted a stitch or two short of the true corner. Unpick four or five stitches, pivot at the mark, and continue.

An Oxford case wants a good press every time it comes out of the dryer, or the flange curls. That is the price of the frame.

Reading a Finished Case and Fixing What Went Wrong

Put the case on the pillow and look at it honestly. Almost every fault in a pillowcase can be traced to one of six causes, and most of them can still be fixed. Learning to read a finished piece and name the cause is what separates a sewer from someone who merely follows instructions. Exodus says of Bezalel that God filled him with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in all manner of workmanship. Understanding is listed alongside skill; knowing why a thing failed is part of the gift.

Six faults and their causes

The case twists on the pillow.

The seam spirals rather than running straight down the side. This is off-grain cutting, and no repair by needle will correct it, because the fabric itself is skewed. If it is mild, a hard steam press with a gentle tug along the short diagonal will pull it closer to true. If it is severe, cut the next one properly. Square the end by tearing or by pulling a thread before measuring.

The pillow strains the seams.

The case goes on with effort and the seams look tight. You measured a compressed pillow, or you forgot to allow for loft. There is no adding fabric back. Use the case on a thinner pillow and cut the next one an inch wider.

The seam opened in the wash.

The stitching pulled free at one end. It was never locked. Backstitch three or four stitches at the start and end of every seam, or use the machine's lock stitch. To repair, restitch the failed section, overlapping about an inch of sound stitching at each end and backstitching there.

The seam puckers.

The fabric gathers slightly along the stitching line. Usually the top tension was too tight, or the stitch was too short for the cloth, or the fabric was pulled through instead of fed. Test on scraps: loosen the top tension a number at a time and sew until the line lies flat. On lightweight cotton, 2.5 millimeters is a sensible length; going down to 1.8 will pucker.

The hem waves.

The mouth ripples instead of lying flat. The hem edge was stretched, either in pressing by dragging the iron, or in sewing by tugging. A press with steam recovers some of it. Next time, lift and set the iron, and let the feed dogs do the pulling.

Raw threads show inside.

Either the seams were plain and unfinished, or the French seam's second pass was too narrow to swallow the trimmed allowance. If a French seam is whiskering, unpick the second pass, trim the inner allowance evenly to an eighth of an inch, press the fold crisp again, and resew a hair wider than three eighths.

Unpicking without ruining the cloth

A seam ripper has a long point and a short ball-tipped point with the blade in the curve between them. Slide the long point under a single stitch and push up until the blade cuts it. Cut every fourth or fifth stitch along a seam, then pull the opposite thread and it will lift out in a length.

Do not run the ripper down the seam like a knife. That is how a hole gets cut into fabric that had only a bad stitch line in it. Work from the side that will be hidden if you nick something, keep the point angled up, and go slowly. Brush the cut thread ends away with a lint roller or a scrap of hook-and-loop tape.

Deciding what to fix

Fix anything structural: unlocked seams, raw allowances, a seam that missed the fabric. Fix anything visible from the doorway: a wandering hem, a crooked flange. Let a slightly imperfect corner alone. A case is meant to be used, not framed, and unpicking a sound seam three times will wear the cloth more than five years of sleeping on it.

Laundering, Storing, and Giving the Case Away

A pillowcase is finished when it goes into service, not when it comes off the machine. How it is washed, folded, and given determines whether it lasts two years or twenty.

Washing

Bedding gets soiled with body oils, and body oils need warm water and time to release. Warm water on a normal cycle handles ordinary use. Hot water sanitizes and is worth using during illness, but understand what it costs: hot washing and hot drying are what fade dyes and gradually wear cotton fibers. If you prewashed the fabric on the hottest setting you would ever use, the case will not shrink further, but the color will still soften over years of heat.

Do not overload the machine. Cases need room to move or the soil simply redistributes.

Skip fabric softener on bedding. It leaves a waxy film that reduces cotton's absorbency, which is exactly the property that makes a cotton case comfortable against skin. A half cup of white vinegar in the rinse softens without coating.

Take the case out of the dryer while it is barely damp and it will need almost no ironing. Left to tumble bone-dry, cotton sets its wrinkles hard.

Pressing and folding

If you press, use full heat with steam for all-cotton and a lower setting for blends. Press the hem and the cuff, since those are what show when the bed is made.

The tidiest way to store a set is to fold the flat sheet and fitted sheet, stack them with one pillowcase, and slide the whole bundle into the second pillowcase. The set stays together, nothing goes missing in the linen closet, and the stack stays clean.

Store linens in a dry place with some air. Airtight plastic bins hold moisture against cloth and can leave a musty smell or, in a damp house, mildew stains that never come out. A cotton bag or an open shelf is better than a sealed tub.

Sewing for other people

A pillowcase is one of the best gifts a sewer can make, because it is quick, it fits everyone, and it is used every night. It is also one of the most welcome things to hand to a household that has just had a baby, moved, lost someone, or come home from a hospital stay. Many congregations and volunteer groups collect handmade cases for children's hospitals and shelters, and a plain, cheerful cotton case is exactly what is wanted.

If you sew for a hospital or a shelter, ask what they will accept before you cut. Most ask for one hundred percent cotton, prewashed, no embellishments that could come loose, and standard size. Follow their list. A case that cannot be accepted helps nobody.

Scripture gives us Dorcas, a woman of Joppa remembered by name for a life full of good works and almsdeeds. When she died, the widows stood by weeping and showed Peter the coats and garments she had made while she was with them. The garments were the evidence of the life. Then Peter gave her his hand and lifted her up and presented her alive to the very people she had sewn for. Her restored life went straight back into that community.

That is a fair picture of what plain sewing is for. Nobody remembered Dorcas for elaborate work. They remembered coats and garments, ordinary things made well for ordinary neighbors who needed them. A stack of pillowcases carried to a family in a hard season is the same errand.

Where to go next

You now know how to measure a pillow, square a cut, hem a deep edge, sew and lock a straight seam, enclose a raw edge in a French seam, roll a contrast cuff, and frame a flange. Every one of those skills transfers. The French seam belongs on curtains and children's clothes. The double hem belongs on every straight edge you will ever finish. Make three or four cases until the sequence is automatic, then give them away.