Pattern Review - Singer Sewing for the Home Pillowcase

I'm slowly re-decorating the guest room that is my sewing space, and one of the things I wanted to do was to make a zippered bolster cover.

There are quite a few tutorials on sewing bolster covers online, but I wanted a nice one with piping!  This one is pretty good.  I turned to my copy of Singer's Sewing for the Home for construction details.  They don't cover the kind of bolster cover I wanted, but they have instructions for a piped/corded pillow, as well as a couple different zipper closures.  I didn't follow the zipper instructions exactly, but thought they were really good!

While some of their projects may be a little out of date, I thought their instructions were really good and could easily be updated with different fabrics.  For example, their instructions on making flange pillow cases were really good and those pillows seem to be really in style right now.  This is definitely a good addition for the sewing library.

I created 2" bias strips from fabric scraps and wrapped it around my purchased cording per the instructions in the book.

I did not snip the piping tape since it was cut on the bias, and found that the bias stretched really well.  I used pins for pinning the bias to the ends of the bolster, but realized I had a bunch of Clover clips that I bought the last time I went to Michael Levine in LA and used those throughout the rest of the construction.

Finishing the piping.  The cording I purchased goes really soft and "fluffy" whenever it's cut; I wasn't super happy with my piping joins because of this.  I think a firmer braided cording would have worked better.

After I attached the piping, I serged the edges.  Lucky for me the spacing worked out perfectly to butt the piping against the edge of the serger presser foot.

After I attached the zipper I topstitched down both sides.  The Singer book recommends using a piece of tape and stitching along the tape, but I used a 1/4" foot and kept the guide in the seam.  I just used regular all purpose thread for this, but you could use topstitching thread here or pick stitch by hand for a nice effect.

I did backstitch along the seam where I wanted the zipper to start, but I wanted to reinforce it.  I attached the zipper similarly to the tutorial link, centering the zipper over the seam.  The zipper I used was longer than the pillow so I could keep the pull out of the way.  When I was ready to open up the basting, I pulled the zipper pull down before reinforcing the zipper stop area.

Clipping the ends of the pillow in place.  I ended up cutting the ends twice; I was unsatisfied with my random cut and fussy cut the ends to match each other.  I'll keep this in mind the next time I make a pillow.  I also unzipped the zipper about halfway so that I could pull the pillow case right side out afterwards.

Using the zipper foot to stitch the pillow together.

Completed pillow on the bed.  I should have fussy cut the main part of the pillow too; the geometric design isn't quite centered on it.  My husband thinks this is OK.
 

The print above the bed is what I'm decorating the room around; it's called "Lovers at Chi Tou"; Chi Tou is a very beautiful forest preserve in my mom's native Taiwan.  I'm trying to pick colors in the painting to decorate the room with; I'm planning to make a bedskirt to match the pillow and I found a beautiful cherry blossom print to recover my ironing board with.

Unfortunately, none of that matches the cute zakka sewing accessories I want to make!  C'est la vie.

Cost Breakdown

1 yard "Artistic Twist" Waverly print from Fabric.com = $21.98
2 yards cording from Fabric.com = $1.36
1 30" YKK Zipper = $2.75
1 yoga bolster pillow from Amazon.com = $33.99 (next time will make my own with poly fiberfill)

Total Spent: $26.09 ($60.08 if you include the pillow)