Sewing Pillowcases Out of Almost Nothing

I am old enough to remember when sets of twin sheets automatically came with two pillowcases instead of just one. Sometimes, the larger sheet sets – double, queen, king, and California king – came with four pillowcases instead of two. And since every set of sheets was also sold as individuals, you could easily purchase extra, matching pillowcases. Sewing pillowcases was not necessary.

The reason for having extra pillowcases was because the part of your set that got dirty the fastest was the pillowcases. Having spares meant you could wash your pillowcases without having to wash the rest of the sheets. With a large household, a small washer, and no dryer other than a small clotheslines, washing less laundry meant less work for mother.

At some point, manufacturers stopped adding extra pillowcases. Doing this without you noticing allowed them to earn more profit on each set, or mask what is, in essence, inflation. The same thing happened to fitted sheets. I love fitted sheets, don’t get me wrong, as they are far easier to manage when making a bed than all that folding and pulling and tucking required to make a flat sheet stay wrapped around a mattress properly.

Having two flat sheets, both of which would fit the mattress, meant you could equalize the wear between the top and the bottom sheet. You would mark one flat sheet and then, every time you washed the sheets and remade the bed, you would alternate the sheets, top and bottom. Your sheets would wear out at about the same rate. Eventually, you would turn your sheets to make them last still longer.

How to Turn Your Sheets

You may have noticed that your sheets wear out the most in the middle, where the bodies sleep, and stay nearly untouched at the sides, where the sheet is wrapped around the mattress. You turn sheets (flat ones only as this doesn’t work for fitted sheets) by opening all the seams on the sheet, ripping it right down the middle long-ways, flipping the two halves so the unworn portions touch, sew the sheet back up the middle, rehem, and voila! The sheet is a bit narrower than originally but not so much it cannot be used and the less-worn portions are now where they need to be: under sleeping bodies and not along the sides of the bed.

When fitted sheets came along, despite all their miraculous ease of use, the thrifty household lost something. Fitted sheets could not be turned as they wore out. The manufacturer made the top sheet smaller as it no longer had to wrap around a mattress on all four sides and get tucked under to stay in place. And of course, as costs rose, you didn’t get extra pillowcases. Your sheets and pillowcases did not wear evenly, leaving you with mismatched strays. You can no longer purchase a replacement since sheets are now pretty much only sold as sets and not as individual items.

So here we are today, at Fortress Peschel, contemplating a flannel top sheet. The bottom sheet wore thin, thinner, thinnest, until it ripped. I sewed many patches using second-hand flannel, but eventually, the fitted sheet still failed. At one point, I also replaced the elastic. The matching pillowcases wore into transparency from decades of use. Their fate was the same; flannel too thin to be reused for anything but shop-rags.

This king-size flat sheet is worn, but it still has years of life left in it. It is too small to be converted into a fitted sheet for my bed, even if I ripped every seam. It just isn’t long enough. After all, why should a manufacturer make a flat sheet long enough to go all the way around a mattress? Nobody makes beds that way anymore.

I have two options: recut this sheet and make a fitted sheet for a twin bed (I have two), or turn this potential discard into pillowcases.

Starting the Pillowcase Process

I always need more pillowcases. The pillowcases are the first part of sheet set to wear thin, they need to be washed all the time, and since Bill and I each use two king-size pillows instead of one, I need a second set every day anyway.

The sheet has enough life left to be worth the sewing. A flat sheet is just a huge piece of fabric. Pillowcases are easy to sew too; all flat seams and very little fancy work if you don’t insist on decorative piping.

You start by ripping every seam on your sheet and ironing the edges flat. Then measure very carefully to see how big your sheet really is. This is vital as the fabric may have stretched out over the years. Once you know your measurements of length and width, draw yourself a picture. How many pillowcases you get will be determined by both the size of your sheet and the size of your desired pillowcases.

A standard-size pillowcase is 20 inches wide by 26 inches long. A queen-size pillowcase is 20 inches wide by 30 inches long. A king-size pillowcase is 20 inches wide by 36 inches long. This is the finished size, from side to side, and from the closed end to the open end. It does not include seam margins or hems.

Next week, we’ll get into the nitty-gritty of making pillowcases.