WIP WEDNESDAY #40: Burrito Pillowcase Demo & Tips

at the beginning of whip wednesday stands for work in progress so that's what a lot of us crafters call our whips when you have a bunch of different projects uh that are kind of ongoing or you're starting something new so it's kind of just a way for me to come on here live and chat with you whether you're watching us on the crafty gemini youtube channel or on the crafty gemini facebook page so welcome to everybody that's tuning in let's say hi to some friends hi maureen from debary that's a neighbor here i'm coming to y'all from my home sewing studio we live in north central florida it's kind of nice and a little overcast today but we have a new uh what is it a tropical storm a new tropical storm something with an fred or something that's on its way here this weekend so uh we'll be kind of hunkering down i won't be starting any new seeds for the garden uh until that storm passes i don't want my stuff to get drowned out let's see who else hi margie tuning in from wisconsin we got lorette tuning in from massachusetts hey everybody hi jessie hey tamara from chicago and janelle is tuning in as well so is mary from phoenix hi everybody okay so let's go ahead and get started can everybody see me and hear me i see somebody said there was an error if you're having a problem maybe go ahead and refresh all right so if you can see me and hear me let me know in the chat box below and i'll go ahead and get started great i see sheila's in sue from minnesota is tuning in and i'm gonna get started because i think we're doing okay on the technology and yes okay great i'm getting some yeses so awesome so in today's whip wednesday i am working on some pillowcases and if you recall i feel like this is always like the number one video tutorial that i posted almost 10 years ago now on my youtube channel ali was a baby and she's going to be 10 next month so maybe 10 years ago and uh every time i meet people in person they'll be like i found you from your burrito pillowcase tutorial or i first learned about you from the burrito pillowcase tutorial so it's super popular has like over a million views so we are going to do a slightly different take on the burrito pillowcase today just because i'm leaving out one step to kind of make it a little bit quicker for us to crank out and i have a sample here to show you so this is what it would look like and if you've made it from my tutorial you know that in between the body of the pillowcase pattern and the cuff we have like a thin little accent trim so i'm skipping the accent trim these are just some new pillowcases for my daughter's room she's really into navy right now so we're going to be using some different navy fabrics all right so we've left out the little trim if you want to see the step-by-step edited video tutorial i included a link for that uh below this youtube video if you're watching us on youtube and we'll go ahead and include it in the chat on facebook as well you can always also just do a google search type in crafty gemini pillowcase and boom it's going to be the first thing that pops up for you all right so we're going to make it real simple today but as you can see in this sample i made it with non-directional fabrics so let's go ahead and switch over to my over-the-shoulder cam here and we'll talk a little bit more and i can show you a little better because i have a wider shot here perfect okay so here's the pillowcase and this overall kind of tossed floral it does and when we talk about directional prints that just means that it doesn't matter which way this is oriented right we can still tell that it's flowers and they're kind of all sprinkled around so it's not like text or a character or some type of uh figurine that you need to read it from left to right depending on which way you place the pillow on the bed okay so what i wanted to do for this demo is i'm going to walk you through making one with just two fabric pieces like this one main body fabric piece and one for the cuff and then i have cut out two pieces of when you're to basically walk you through some tips if you're using directional prints how you'd want to cut it i know that a lot of you like to make these pillows for kids or for charity and a lot of those fun novelty prints that are on the market are all directional so i went ahead and pulled out another navy directional print that i have here with little unicorns for allies and let's see all right hey we got a bunch more friends tuning in we have some of you saying that you've made a bunch of these pillowcases before so that is awesome if you haven't stick around maybe you'll learn some tips so that you can crank some out using directional prints as well all right so let me scoot this stuff out of the way so to get started now one thing to note is that the size that i'm going to be working on here is just for a standard pillow okay which typically measures around 20 by 26 inches but even here in our house we have standard pillows that have all kinds of uh different measurements okay so we're just gonna keep it simple with this i know a lot of times people will ask me well what are the dimensions if i want to make it for a king size quilt or a king king why do i keep saying quilt um a king-sized pillow so i don't use king-sized pillows so i've never made one for a king size pillow if you have and you know the dimensions off the the top of your head go ahead and put it in the chat because i know a lot of people will benefit from that since i often get that question asked a lot but i've never made one for king size pillow not a quilt pillow okay so normally i would start off with whatever the main fabric of the pillowcase is going to be i keep it just as it came off the bolt meaning if you walk into a fabric store or you order it online and you're ordering like designer quality quilting cottons this is how it's going to come selvage and selvage at the top and it's usually folded right here on the bolt okay so that's what i mean when i say the same way it came off the bolt so the length that you're going to want of a piece like that is going to be 24 inches all right so this one is cut to 24 that's for the main body piece then the cuff itself i cut to half of that so 12 inches by what we call in quilting and in fabric yardage like this the width of the fabric because the fabric from selvage to selvage is the width of the fabric and this is usually if you're working with designer quality quilting cottons and most you know even quilting cottons that you get like at your big box joanne's fabric store and stuff like that they usually range in width from about 40 to 45 inches wide and that means from selvage which is this white strip here and salvage okay so that's what you're looking for something that measures about 40 to 45 across the width and then for the cuff i cut it just to 12 inches and then the body to 24. so let's talk about this directional print okay so when the fabric comes off the bolt like this i see the unicorns and they are kind of tossed all over the place but there is still a correct way to orient this so that they're mostly reading up and down because they're not all completely upside down either so the the right way to read this would be like this where the unicorns are all reading from top to bottom and some of them are facing to the right to the left kind of tilted and standing a little bit up but they all read this way well in order for you to see if that fabric is going to work for you in a directional sense um what we're going to do is open it up basically going over the first two steps of making the pillowcase estrella's asking does that account for shrinking after washing so if you're using the better quality quilting cottons it's only going to shrink about one to three percent at the most so as you can see in this one the standard pillow that's inside of it is still smaller right so even if i were to wash this because i didn't pre-shrink it and i wash it it's not going to shrink that much to make it a problem right and if you are hesitant about that two things you can do one is pre-wash your fabric and two is maybe add on an extra inch or so so that you just make sure you have extra and not less than what you need okay all right let's see okay mary jo is saying for a queen sized pillow she cuts the fabric pieces 20 inches by 30. so i mean it's a lot of just trial and error and playing around with what works for you especially if you have kind of like a set um standard pillow or whatever size pillow at your house i would say go by those measurements and then adjust accordingly to see you know make one regular one first see how it fits if it needs to be a little bit bigger a little bit wider you can adjust from there all right so the first two steps would be to place your the main exterior fabric of the pillowcase in front of you with the pretty side facing up like this selvage on the left and selvage on the right now if i do the same thing for my cuff and it would be up top here pretty sides together okay this is basically the positioning for the first step of making the pillowcase i'm gonna stop right here and i'm just gonna turn things out and fold them the way that it would be as we work our way through the steps so you can see how the unicorns are gonna end up looking right so if i sewed this here that would be the cuff this would be the body then this whole thing would get folded in half with this and this is just part of kind of how i like to teach and show people like walk yourself through visually how is it supposed to look so the cuff is sewn up here and this is the body of the unicorns the unicorns are reading correctly but only because i have it oriented like this and you're not going to sleep with the pillow like this right we're going to turn it so that the cuff is to the one side and then look what happens to the unicorns they're turned on their side i personally don't think it's that big of a deal so if you only have directional prints just go ahead and make some with it especially if they're for kids they're gonna love it as long as you know whatever the cutesy design is nobody really cares but if you do want it to be oriented correctly you'll have to cut it a different way okay and i'll show you i'm going to keep this cuff because i'm still going to work with this this is what i would call a non-directional print it doesn't matter which way the little jacks are going right let's see sharon says this pattern is plenty big for a standard and works fine for queen size 2. it's bigger than the ones you purchase so that's good to know again just you know check the tag on the pillows that you have and see what they're what the measurements are i've seen some that instead of being about 20 by 26 they're instead like 20 by 29 so they're just like a little bit longer and so in that case you could just add a couple inches to the body and or to the cuff okay because we're going in that direction lengthwise all right so this is the wrong one and so this one here let me see all right so now this one i'm going to orient it the way that i had it before so the same the way that it would come off the bolt is like this remember the selvage on one end and selvage on the other i don't have a selvedge here because i've already trimmed it to size but you can see if i would have cut it like this the same way that we oriented the other one that's how we would have ended up with the uh facing the wrong direction so what you have to do in this case instead is to cut it remember we talked about the demand or the the width of the fabric on designer quality quilting cottons being 40 to 45 i went ahead and cut this 42 inches along the lengthwise okay which is more than a yard so you it requires if you're going to be turning things around to make them directional it requires that you have more fabric so whereas for this we cut 24 inches which is less than a yard by the width of the fabric here we needed to go 42 inches this way and then cut it down to the 24 in the opposite way so let me walk you through this i have the selvage going this way okay so along a selvage edge cut is where you need to have that 40 to 45 okay and then we're going to take our cuff so we're still going to do the same thing and i'm actually going to do it to the other side we'll trim away that selvage after so we'll do the same thing and visually just walk through to see if we're doing it right so again the cuff would be up here the same width okay going lengthwise together i would say one on top of the other pretty sides touching right we're gonna put some pins there eventually but if i flip this to the right side and then i fold it in half like we just mentioned doing because these are going to be the steps now you can see that the unicorns are kind of sideways so that when we do turn it and have our cuff here and the body of the pillowcase here now the unicorns are oriented correctly okay so walk yourself through that you're basically just changing the dimensions instead of running 24 inches by the width of the fabric this way we're going with the fabric this way and cutting 42 and then trimming that down because you basically end up with like a 42 by 42 inch square and you need it to come down to 24 inches so you're kind of just swapping the measurements okay but if it doesn't make sense try to do it like i did here and just kind of orient things together and turn it to see how it's going to turn out when you do it okay now just keep in mind that on this side the unicorns will be correct or oriented correctly but because this is one continuous piece that just gets folded in half if we were to flip this over and have the cuff on this side then the unicorns are going to be upside down okay and the only way to fix that those of you that have been in my bag making clubs and stuff you know when i share tips about working with directional fabrics would be to cut it here flip one rectangle and sew it together right but then you'd have a seam going down the side where we normally wouldn't on this pillow case so that's i feel like it's getting a little bit out there but there's a lot of different options to doing that okay so let's see make sure i'm not missing any quick questions here that have to do with this okay all right so let's go ahead and set it up so this fabric here pretty side face up take my cuff fabric pretty side face down and if you're using two different uh fabrics from different manufacturers or brands you may find that the fabric length when you line them up here whether you're working with directional fabric or not it might vary it's okay you can trim it all up after and i talked about that in the tutorial that i did before so i'm going to offset this a little because i have selvedge there and i don't want it in my project i can trim it off after and then i'm just lining up the top two edges here and placing some pins now the pins as i insert them i'm placing them horizontal to me okay but parallel to that top raw edge and the reason i'm doing that is just to keep the pins from uh being in our way when we go to fold this whole thing up and those of you that have made my little burrito pillow case before you know exactly what i'm talking about so i'm just going to place pins you don't have to put them super close because after we roll things up and position it for sewing we're going to remove these pins and insert them a different way so i really just to save time here we'll just place pins maybe every four inches you don't really need much and for those of you that like to use clips i would not use clips at this step because you want it to be kind of like the lowest profile hold on your fabric and i'll show you where you can use clips next okay when we get ready to sew it at the machine okay so i'm here i got all the way to the end you can see that this fabric measures a little bit longer than the one i cut because i sub cut mine to 42 inches this is the width of the fabric on this one which looks like it's about 44 and a half okay let's see yeah so geo says i wouldn't mind the seam if the fabric is oriented correctly so i guess it's personal preference absolutely because you can sew it together in two panels and just have more seams around it's all i mean and that's what sewing crafting is in general it's just personal preference however you want to do it is the right way to do it okay so what was i doing now we're going to flip the cuff fabric up and away from you so you should be looking at both fabrics pretty sides up i'm going to take the body of this and i'm rolling it onto itself and just make sure that you don't roll it super wide like this you want it to be rolled so that the roll itself maybe is about three to four inches the reason for that is that it's going to help keep it away from this top edge which doesn't get sewn in and at this step we don't want it to kind of get in our way and have us sew through more layers than we're supposed to if that makes sense all right so this has been rolled up all the way up to where the two fabrics meet then i'm going to take my cuff fabric and flip it down over top of it then i'll grab it here at the pins and i'm going to flap that fabric back and then bring this up all right so i'm gonna show you that again we roll roll roll the body fabric all the way up to here right before it meets grab your cuff fabric bring it all the way over your roll you're looking at your pins again grab it at the pins and grab that roll inside there too so it doesn't unroll for you flip it down so now i'm looking at the pretty side of the cuff and then i'm going to flip this down and up and bring it to match up with the raw edge up here so this is where we're now going to add where we pinned here just two layers of fabric we now need to add this third layer of fabric and this burrito method is what allows us to have clean seams on the inside so you don't have any raw edges these three raw edges the two that are pinned and this additional one that i've added now are going to be completely concealed all right so now i'm folding this up and i'm going to remove my pin and grab being the last layer i just added of the cuff i'm going to insert the pins uh vertically here perpendicular now to the raw edge of my fabric because we're going to sew it down and i always recommend that my students sew with the pins inserted perpendicular because that way you don't run the risk of not being able to see where the needle is coming down and you could possibly hit the metal pin as you're sewing and i definitely never recommend that you sew over pins just grab all your three layers make sure that you know none of them slip away from you because that would be a mess too and if you use clips this is where you would use the clips okay for thin layers like this i like to just use the pins but you can just place clips here and i do that a lot when i teach kids the clips are really easy for them and they don't have to worry about getting pinched the whole time they're sewing so you could do clips like that or you can do pins all right just make sure double check make sure you're grabbing all three layers the whole way i'll put a clip here remove this pin and we'll just put one more at the end so now you have this entire burrito of fabric and we're going to sew using a quarter of an inch seam allowance just straight down here where we've pinned okay so this is what i mean by rolling it up so that it's not all the way in your way you want to feel here and make sure that the rolled up main fabric is not in there you should only have three layers of fabric that you're going to sew through so let's set up my sewing machine let's see okay turn it on my foot pedal all right let me fix this up make sure y'all can see me put my pin cushion here all right so here we go wow christy says i have 18 grand darlings i'm making all of them pajamas and matching pillowcases for christmas i love this method thank you that is awesome and they do whip up quick if you do things assembly line style you can easily crank a bunch of these out especially if you skip the trim and you just do it like this with two fabrics that would work as well all right so let me there we go get you a little bit more close up and i'm going to change my needle position so that i could be a quarter of an inch away from the edge and then my stitch length anywhere between 2 and 2.5 is fine i'm just going to start somewhere here because i can see that the main fabric doesn't start until further up that's fine let's crank up the speed a bit needle down i took a few backstitches there where i saw that my main fabric started so here's a tip for those of you that are not used to maybe sewing with heavier things or bulky things with multiple layers this whole strip instead of leaving it dangling down it's going to be putting a lot of drag on the sewing machine and the presser foot so i'm going to bring it up on top of the table for you if you're sitting in a in a chair or machine that's set into a table you may want to put it on your lap just try and keep it from dragging on the sewing machine needle as you sew and now if you're new to sewing and maybe you're not a quilter if you find that a quarter of an inch seam is kind of narrow you can absolutely use a 3 8 of an inch seam for this project too there's wiggle room in there okay so don't feel like you have to sew these really narrow seams if you don't feel comfortable doing it or if you know that you're gonna probably miss one of the layers of fabric as you do it and i'm hoping that i don't mess up here i'm trying to keep an eye on all my layers of fabric that everything is together so this is just one straight seam so far all right let's stitch this up let's see yeah so sherry says i usually accordion pleated and put it in my lap that's a great way to do it just set it down on you whatever you find that works without you know allowing the weight of that project to be holding your machine down is good okay the last bit here let me peek make sure that navy fabric is in there make sure also that you don't have any of the other fabric from your roll and again it doesn't have to be super super perfect it will turn out because like i said there's wiggle room in here all right where are my snips i don't know here they are clips away pins away let's see what we got okay so there's your burrito i'm trying to see if i don't if i didn't miss anything make sure that that middle fabric doesn't move on you so it's helpful even if you find like you don't need that many clips or pins just put some more in there because you don't want to have to re-flip this whole thing to fill it in so now we're just going to reach inside and pull on the main fabric from this tube just pull and pull and pull and keep pulling until everything comes out and you should be looking at the right side of the cuff on both sides because that we fold it in half to conceal those raw edges and then the main fabric will have a pretty side and then a wrong side because that fabric is still open okay this project the parts that take the longest is really the pressing okay so here we have our cuff here we have the main fabric and if you fold it in half tada there are my unicorns correctly oriented again because it's one piece remember that if you flip it this way they'll be upside down so up to you which side you decide to put the cuff on right because you can put it on this side and then have it be the opposite but same difference now this is key and i think this is helpful to note for other projects if you ever have a seam that you sew and this happens a lot in quilting too certain areas will roll they get kind of bubbled over like this and i find that one of the most common beginner mistakes is that they just press it like right as it is and you don't want to do that you want to make sure that you pull the fabric out of that seam first before you press anything so for this i'm going to grab my tailor's clapper here and we do have some of these in stock i don't think we have very many we wiped out my distributor with the last bit that they had so i did buy the rest of those and they are listed in the online shop we'll put the the link here in the chat for y'all too um am i in a good position here on camera i think so let's go ahead and open this up a little bit this shot okay so here's what i mean by rolling it out so if i'm working on one side i see this wants to roll if you just hit this with an iron you can catch a little bit of both fabrics like that and then you're going to end up on one section wondering well why does this one look wider than this one i know i sewed it pretty accurately but it's not in the sewing that you make that mistake it can often happen here in the pressing so what i do and what i mean by opening it up is spread the fabrics away from each other okay and then give it a press and i'm doing this on one side i'm gonna grab my clapper and set that seam on the back side i don't know what's going on but i'm going to also press it from that side too so i come up here to where the fold is because there is no seam on the top but i don't want it rolling around on me okay now if you're not familiar with the taylor's clapper if you watch my videos you know what a taylor's clapper is by now but this is just a piece of hardwood that um helps kind of take away the heat and from the iron from the fabric and it just sets creases folds hems and everything beautifully so we use it all the time in handbag making in quilting and patchwork and then of course in garment sewing so again i'm separating those two i don't want it rolling and having me losing fabric or making things look uneven when i know that i sewed pretty straight all right so now we're going to flip it over do the same thing to the other side and you'll see sometimes it happens that when i press from one side it rolls so like here i have to you see how this is like rolling over i would lose like at almost a quarter of an inch there roll that up and away and if you find that just the heat of a dry iron doesn't help you can always spritz your project in the fabric too with a little mist of water and that will help kind of release any wrinkles or creases that maybe you set that you didn't want in place and then hit it with the heat again then with your clapper okay all that helps oh awesome terry says i love the way we see you in the bubble and demo the project at the same time thank you we try to do that because i know sometimes it's no fun to have me talking and then my hands are just going like while i'm talking and i'm not really showing anything so see here you see how that's folded back i need to release that fabric from there and then press it up and away so take your time with the pressing steps they are essential in all of your sewing projects it takes long but i don't know why i like pressing i don't like pressing like just big yardage of fabric to prepare things but i like pressing in in steps as i'm making stuff so because i set that crease there since i hit it from the front side first i'm gonna mist it with a little water to release that and then i'll re-press this making sure that i'm spreading that fabric up and away from each other at the seam all right yeah and if you're enjoying this demo if you're learning any tips go ahead and give this video a thumbs up if you're on facebook or on youtube you can also click the share button to tell other friends about it so they can tune in that we are live here on wednesdays at 1pm eastern doing demos chatting sales new courses all kinds of stuff here all my little crafty gemini happenings all right so boom that's done now let's go ahead and clean this up and by clean it up remember when i said depending on whether you cut a directional fabric in different measurements like i did for this unicorn fabric or if you're using different brands of fabric different manufacturers you'll see that you'll have it be a little bit off on the ends and so this is where we want to get my big ruler out of here this is where you'll want to clean things up okay so i'm just going to take my long strip ruler make sure that i have a square corner here so i want this to run here and here so i'll put a line on my ruler up at the top and then i'm going to run it down the side here and whatever is sticking out i'm trimming all right we'll do the same thing to the other side and if you didn't cut it yourself like you're using directional prints the way that i show you in my other tutorial then you'll see that you basically will be trimming away a selvedge from your main fabric and a selvage from the cuff those are the fabrics that you'll be trimming up at this step okay super cute now i'm gonna go ahead and trim off the selvage that i have on the other side because remember we cut it differently for this unicorn fabric so i'm just going to line things up here looking good and i'm going to trim away this whole chunk of selvage here because i do not want this in my project and this is a dear stella print number 1540 if anybody's interested okay so now you can see that this is the pillow pillowcase right so what we need to do is sew down in an l shape here and here but if we don't want to have any raw edges on the inside we want to use a french seam you can also use your serger but you'd still see some you know the stitches the serger stitch but i like to do french seams and so that's what i'm going to show you how to do so line it up just like it's going to look when it's complete and we're going to pin in that l shape so not along here because the cuff is already finished that was done on the fold you're just pinning down here and then across the bottom here and it might look like you're doing it wrong if you've never done french seams before but it is correct you sew it wrong sides together first then we go back in and we sew wrong sides together and in those two seams that's what helps us conceal the raw edges inside and you won't end up with any raw edges anywhere on your whole pillow case so that is the beauty of this method okay blanca says you're the only person who teaches in an amazing way that's straight and to the point i can follow as i go and i can always understand what you're saying you have a beautiful voice for these videos thank you thank you so much that's really kind of you i appreciate that i tried to sometimes especially back in the days when i first started with videos it was really hard for me to keep it shorter and sweet and to the point i like to repeat a lot as a teacher and like go over things and share five different ways to do it but i think i've gotten better over the years with breaking down you know exactly what i want people to do for the steps and that's why i have a lot of super simple like beginner friendly sewing project tutorials on my youtube channel here because i find that the more success you have with a simple quickie project the more likely you are to continue with the sewing so that's what i want all right so i'm just placing my pins again we're going to go straight to sewing from here so you can use clips if you are a clipper and you can use them here notice what i'm doing here to align the raw edges instead of picking up the fabric and placing it and then picking it up and placing it to fix it i leave the fabric as is and i just scratch it in that direction and that tends to move it a sixteenth of an inch one eighth whatever i need it to be in order to align things and you'll always see me doing that no matter what whether i'm making clothes or quilts it doesn't matter i'm always doing that when i need to bring you know raw edges together all right so i pinned across there now we'll do the same on this side so we sewed one seam right and now we're going to sew two more seams and the pillowcase will be done not bad oh awesome melanie thank you so much she said she's enjoying learning from me i'm glad you're tuning in remember that if you like this demo and you're learning some tips make sure you give us a thumbs up and share it on your uh page okay so now we're going to sew let me grab my whoops i just unplugged my foot pedal let me grab the sewing machine scoot it over here and i know there's like 30 of you on the wait list right now for the jukey lb 5020 sewing machines that i use in my demos here um we're waiting to hear word because we should be able to get some soon so as soon as we restock those yo whoever's on our wait list will be the first to know okay so be on the lookout for that okay oh lindsay says she loves my little tips and tricks that's what it's all about because every time you learn a new little tip or trick in a specific project it's not just for that one right you can use it in your next project in the next project and that's i feel like that's how you build up your knowledge over time people all the time ask me like how do you know so much i've made so many mistakes i learned from them and i tried different little hacks all right so my stitch length here i have mine set to 2.2 and and okay and my needle position is set so that i'm sewing about a quarter of an inch seam so i'm going to backstitch at the beginning and then i'm just going to sew straight down one seam oh awesome glenda says she loves the jukie 50 20. she says it's an awesome little machine and she got one from us that's great i mean y'all see i use this every whip wednesday you see how many different projects i've made on it right stretch knit fabrics quilting cottons bag making foam fusible fleeces i mean this thing is a little workhorse all right so just a quarter of an inch seam in the l shape so we are going to pivot at this bottom corner when i get to it don't just stitch straight off and then pick up a new seam you know you want to pivot so another reason it's a good beginner project to get you practicing those skills anytime we're sewing over uh or we're sewing pieces of fabric that are squares or rectangles together we have to typically pivot on a corner so you're just gonna stop whatever seam allowance you're using stop that distance up from this bottom corner so i'm a quarter of an inch seam and i'm gonna stop right there i stop with the needle in the project lift my presser foot up then swing the fabric this way so i realign this edge presser foot down and keep on sewing super easy but again one of those key key skills that you have to have if you're going to be sewing a lot almost done with this one then i'm going to show you how we trim so remember we sewed this first seam in a way that looks like it's backwards don't tell me i ran out of bobbin thread no i'm good okay how many times does that happen to us right when you're just like i'm almost done and then the bobbin wins all right so i'm gonna backstitch at the end too needle up and then i'll cut off here okay so machine out of the way for now now we are going to trim the same seam that we just sewed trim that seam allowance down to about half so if you use the quarter of an inch seam allowance here i'm now going to trim it down to an eighth of an inch okay and it might seem and i get this a lot especially from beginners they'll say like well if you were gonna just leave it at an eighth of an inch why did you sew a quarter of an inch seam allowance well if you have ever tried to sew an eighth of an inch seam allowance you find that it's not gonna sit as straight probably because it's such a narrow seam allowance it's like can be tricky sometimes it's like not enough fabric for the feed dogs on the machine to pull through it's tricky to keep all the edges lined up and still sew that narrow of a seam so oftentimes you'll see things like this in sewing especially in garment sewing where you'll sew like a half of an inch seam allowance and then it tells you trim it down and it's like why am i wasting fabric well it's not because of your wasting fabric on purpose it's because it's easier to sew it and then trim it down in our case we are making french seams here so we don't have any of these raw edges on the inside of our pillowcase so we have to trim this down to get rid of some of that bulk so that when we go in next and sew another seam we don't have any of these little bits and fraying bits of the fabric creeping out through your seam so you'll see what i mean when i sew so notice i am trimming the seam allowance down to an eighth of an inch if you're not that comfortable with the rotary cutter and free handing it you can see that the fabric kind of wants to bubble up because you're so close to the outer edge and you're trying to trim up if this starts to bubble up on you a great tip is to use a ruler just to hold it as a general guide even if your seam allowance is not that straight you don't have to keep the ruler super straight you can always adjust back and forth back and forth as you cut but that way your fingers are away from trying to hold that fabric down and flat and you can still be following the edge of your ruler to get rid of that teensy little bit of seam allowance trim all right so more tips more tips for you okay all right so now we sewed that seam in the l shape wrong sides of the fabrics touching we trimmed down we sewed it a quarter of an inch we trimmed it down to one eighth of an inch now i want you to flip the whole pillowcase wrong side out and this is the final final final seam that we need to sew but again remember we talked about the rolling of the fabric here it is again and this always happens well not always but most of the time if you're sewing something then you flip it out it bubbles up like this can you yes good you can see that on camera what i mean by bubbling up and so if i were just to take my iron and press this flat i would be losing i mean almost 3 8 of an inch on each side you don't want that so again we need to make sure to pull that fabric out of the seam so and i know this is like one extra step that takes a little long right before you're done sewing the last seam but this is absolutely key that you take the time to press here before you sew the final seam all right so i'm running my hand inside pushing on the seam and lining it up so that the seam line is right on that outer edge like the side edge of the whole thing so i will do the cuff first hit it with the clapper to help set it and then you're going to run your finger down the sides again doing the same thing pull that fabric out of that seam and do it in chunks you don't want any of that fabric bubbling to the inside and the flatter you have this the easier and the quicker it's going to be to sew the last seam because this needs to be lying flat because that's what you're going to be aligning with your guide right if we're going to sew a quarter of an inch through here this cannot be crooked and have some in and some out because then your final seam is not going to be straight either so i'm just reaching into the seam and pulling that fabric out to get everything as flat as possible as i press push everything out okay lindsay says she uses a ruler she sticks it inside to push out the fabric that is a great tip you can do that on the inside like that and push everything out i'm i'm like really tactile i just like to touch all the things and work all the fabric things i feel like that's like my easiest way to learn how to manipulate fabrics in different projects so i really just like to touch the fabric and work with it you know make it do what i want to do but uh a chopstick also works i have this big chunky bamboo needle which is great for the corners if you find that you're having issues with that like this corner right here i definitely need to um poke it out a little bit more just make sure you're not using like scissors or anything sharp to poke that out there we go perfect all right so i'm done pressing this the clapper really really helps here because normally you would probably if you didn't set them super super flat you'd probably have to maybe go in and put some pins or some clips as well to hold it flat for when you're going to go in and sew but you can see how crisp all my stuff is so i don't need pins i'm just going to go straight to the sewing machine and stitch up the last one oh simone says i love that you don't assume beginners know what or how to do various skills that's that's just the way that i teach which for people that know what they're doing it can be super annoying because they're just like i already know that get on with it but i teach for the people that don't know it so if that's you you can just kind of fast forward or skip over some of the stuff that i tend to repeat a lot or go into further explanation for beginners that's just the way i i teach it's hard to get away from that okay so we're going to go in and sew a quarter of an inch seam allowance now here's another tip for you if you sewed a quarter of an inch in the first seam and then you trimmed it down to an eighth of an inch but you're not that great at sewing super consistently i would say on this step so we're using a 3 8 of an inch seam because that's just going to give you a little bit extra right an extra eighth of an inch wiggle room there so you don't run the risk of going narrower on this seam and have the risk of like the little fraying bits of the previous seam allowance showing through if that makes sense so an eighth of an inch is not really going to affect the size too much so try that if you find that like a quarter of an inch seam is a little bit too narrow for you so i'm just going to go ahead yeah i'm going to do 3 8 of an inch why not so we'll start at the top here at the cuff and i'm going to take a couple back stitches to secure that and then i'm just going to continue sewing down i don't have any pins put in here and because i'm sewing through a little bit more bulk i'm going to bump my stitch length up to 2.6 this time so if you don't know that tip remember that if your machine tends to kind of get hung up or you feel like it's not feeding the fabric through as quickly as you'd like consider lengthening your stitch length to help the machine pull more fabric through at a time and that can happen when we're sewing through bulky things of course the cuff has more layers of fabric than the body of this does that's why i lengthened it especially up there here i mean it's not going to make too much of a difference two millimeters in length is not a big deal all right i'm basically stitching here a seam allowance that will allow me to clear completely the previous seam allowance and that's what a french seam is instead of sewing the seam once you sew it twice but you end up with a clean finish on the inside and no raw edges so again i pivoted needle down in the project lift turn my fabric presser foot back down and then continue stitching across this l shape and that's it we're going to give it one final press when we flip the whole thing right side out and that's that's it it doesn't take long at all especially if you skip the cup the little decorative trim my my tutorial that's on my youtube channel i'm trying to backstitch here give me a couple back stitches uh my tutorial that's on the youtube channel if you just type in like crafty gemini burrito pillowcase or just pillowcase that one we did three pieces of fabric because we add a decorative little thin trim another strip of fabric in there in between the cuff and the main body but for this one we just did the cuff the main body boom two pieces three seams and we're out of there and again no raw edges anywhere i mean look this this side that we just sewed is the inside of the pillowcase it's such a great way to finish it such a clean look and still beginner friendly right doesn't require anything fancy and not much extra time at all so actually let me leave this here because i i can't help it i'm like trying to save time and skip a step of pressing but i can't i just i like to press and i like my stuff to look crisp okay all right um annette says she's just tuning in because she had a conference call at work thanks for tuning in annette and she's asking will you have this as a video tutorial so i do have it as a video tutorial but if you all would like to see me do an updated version let me know that in the comments below because we're looking we're putting together a list now of new video content to create for my youtube channel and i mean that video is about 10 years old so if y'all want to see a revamped version let me know in the comments and we'll look that over as we you know prepare our editorial calendar to to make more videos all right so again i'm doing the same thing i do it without even thinking about it is pulling out that fabric right from the side seam give it a good quick press what a cute little gift and there you go i hope that those tips on working with the directional fabric helped y'all to give it a go because i know a lot of those like juvenile prints novelty fun prints a lot of them feature directional prints like this so here i can probably just pull this out i don't have to go on on the inside but if you needed to you can always you know use a chopstick a ruler or a big chunky knitting needle and poke that section out all right so let's have a look at what we got here we have the cuff going this way and the unicorns are oriented correctly even though it is a directional print so that worked out beautifully for us remember because this is one continuous piece if we flip it this way they're going to be upside down so just keep that in mind when you're working with directional prints especially if you're some of the ones that like to add like embroidery on it and do things make sure that you plan ahead for how you're orienting everything to the way that you want the design to look which way is front and which is the back of your pillowcase all right let's go ahead and switch to my face here these are going to be cute for ali's room she likes these she said navy is her new favorite color y'all so all right let's see okay great oh some of you are saying that you do want me to do an updated video so that's great that's awesome sometimes i think like well i've already done that and i don't think people are interested in seeing me do it again but i mean nothing like new cameras and and new video footage and cute new fabrics to make another tutorial with okay all right let's see oh good some of you are giving me some other um video suggestions that's something that we're always looking forward to i'm gonna get ready to send out an email um gathering some more more information from y'all as we put together a new editorial calendar and i posted on the crafty gemini facebook page a poll was it yesterday or the day before there's a poll there with like a big question mark and i was asking basically what are your main struggles when it comes to sewing and quilting like what do you struggle with the most and i was actually surprised to see that a lot of you said getting started and like following through with the project from beginning to end so it looks like a lot of you are maybe losing steam like you might go into a project super excited and then once you start it kind of just goes so i i think that's really interesting and it's one of the ways that i like to offer my video courses that i do in my clubs and bag clubs and garment classes and stuff like that is super step by step so that you can follow along with us and that seems to help keep people incentivized because we do giveaways at the end uh to get people you know completing the projects and going down step by step so i'll definitely be planning to do more stuff like that all right um great let me see anything else oh lucretia says can you show what the seam looked like on the inside yeah so the seam looks like exactly what we had just sewn when you sew it so here is oh i'm like showing this camera but can you see how the seam is it's not raw it's completed seam and the side i mean it's exactly the inside was the part that we just sewed so no raw edges this is how it looks it's just a sewn seam the whole thing on the inside is like that so there's no raw edges at all okay so definitely give this project a try if you haven't watched my first version of the tutorial that i did 10 years ago the link is on youtube you can always just do a quick search crafty gemini pillowcase and the step-by-step video tutorial i think it's less than eight minutes long we'll walk you through step by step on how to make it okay in this video if you just missed it you can go ahead and rewind it in the replay and um i shared tips on working with directional fabrics on how to make the pillowcase all right thanks everybody for tuning in i will send out some new emails if you're not on my email list definitely check that out and i will see you all next wednesday for another edition of whip wednesday bye

Channel: TheCraftyGemini

Views: 6,309

Rating: 4.940496 out of 5

Keywords: craftygemini, thecraftygemini, crafty gemini, burrito pillowcase, pillowcase tutorial, sewing

Id: 0d3c6lp8qKg

Length: 50min 40sec (3040 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 11 2021