Now you all know that I love to quilt, but I’m also a huge foodie. That’s right I
just love to eat. And I believe that the second greatest invention right behind the spork
is the tortilla. If I could put every meal in a tortilla I certainly would. And so today
we’re putting the tortilla to work in the quilting studio. That’s right, we’re making
the very basic burrito pillowcase.
That’s right, today’s tutorial is the basic burrito pillowcase. A lot of you have
done this before. I’m going to walk you through the basic steps here in just a second.
Make sure you stay tuned, I do have some bonus footage for the end of the tutorial you’re
going to absolutely love. And for the supplies today, we’re using three fabrics all from
Michael Miller. The body of the fabric you need ¾ of a yard, 27 inches. And I’m using
a jet black which is a solid, ok? We’re going to talk about right sides up as we go
through this though. I’m using the Fairy Frost Clementine. This will be the two inch
little strip or little trim band on there so you’ll need a ¼ yard of that. And then
this is super cool. This is Fairy Frost, it actually glows in the dark. So when you turn
the lights off at night, right before bedtime, your pillowcase will glow. And this is going
to be that nice big cuff at the end. We’re going to need a ten inch piece, so get yourself
a ½ yard because you’re going to want to pre-wash all of your fabrics, maybe even twice
before you get started. These are a washable finish project so we always pre-wash fabrics
before we make our cuts when we’re doing washable pieces. So let’s get started.
So step one was to take that trim fabric and cut it into a two inch strip so this was two
inches wide. And then I’ve gone ahead and I’ve pressed it with the right sides out.
So it’s now an inch wide by the width of the fabric.Right now for all of this, everything
is staying the width of the fabric. I’m going to teach you how to trim it all down
because not all fabrics are the same length. I don’t know why. We’re not even going
to bother talking about that today. So step one is getting our trim ready. The two inch
piece ironed right sides out.
Then we’re just going to go right into burrito format. Check this out. So first of all you’re
going to take your cuff fabric, that ten inch piece. It is going to lay, and this is really
important because it gets a little tricky right? It is right sides up. The glow in the
dark is hard to see. Don’t turn off the lights. That’s fun. But you can see right
on the selvedge. The selvedge has got the printing on the right side of the fabric.
So that means that it’s right sides up right now. Then we’re going to take the body of
our pillowcase, the 27 inches. And we are laying this selvedge to selvedge. And this
if it was a print would also be right sides up. We’re using a solid so you can’t get
it wrong right now so don’t worry too much about that but if you’re using a print,
right sides up, right sides up. And the third piece, believe it or not, right sides up again.
So I’m going to take this trim and I’m laying it right down here. Let’s point this
out though. If you look close. All of my raw edges are facing out right now, ok? Back to
the kitchen we go. We’re going to take and we’re going to roll our beans and our cheese
up inside of our tortilla, the trim fabric. Then we’re going to bring this over just
like you see here. And the fun thing is we are now technically stitching this, this is
your double check. I would be sewing my white fabric, my cuff fabric, right sides together.
So if all this was out of the way, it would be right sides together. And that’s how
you know that it’s going to sew perfectly when we get started. Now because it’s a
bit of a handful, I want you to put a few pins as you go through. Let me show you how
that turns out.
So here we are with the pins already in place. To keep everything nice and organized. And
now I’m going to go over to the sewing machine probably bounce into caffeinated mode. And
sew a quarter inch seam allowance through all of those layers at once. I’m going to
go fast. You take it nice and slow so that you get a real accurate seam allowance. I’m
going to just pull that first pin as I approach the machine. I never stitch over my pins.
I always get them out of the way right before the foot lands. I’m going to put this up
here to keep a little bit of the weight up. And reset everything perfect for just a split
second. And away we go.
Ok, nice and easy that was. Now for today I put some green thread in the machine so
you can kind of see what I’m doing as I go along. Of course you’d want to matching
here with your threads. But this was mostly for the benefit of the video. And those of
you who know my tube turning technique tricks, wow that’s a mouthful, you’re probably
wondering why I didn’t lay my cording in here. If not, check out my quick tips. It’s
a really cool thing you can watch. I’m going to turn this thing right sides out now. I’m
just going to go ahead and grab the body of the pillowcase itself and start slowly and
gently turning this back to right sides out. And I’m going to get my iron warming up
while we’re waiting here. Just pull this through here because we’re going to want
to press our trim piece over. Look at that. How awesome did that turn out, right? So that’s
really easy. And at this point, the benefit of this is there is no raw edges anywhere.
So that when this is washed over and over again, even though we’ve pre-shrunk the
fabrics, we won’t get all that raveling in the washing machine. Now I’m going to
press this real quick and then I’m going to show you how to trim it down so that all
the fabrics are the right size or equal sizes. Just going to run the iron over this kind
of quick. And actually what I’m looking for is more of the crease up along the top,
getting a nice crisp edge. Because I’m going to kind of use that as a measuring point.
Just like that.
Now what we’re going to want to do, we’re going to actually sew a French seam. And I’m
going to fold this right sides out. As I’m preparing myself here. I’m just going to
take a minute and get everything nice and crisp. Give it a little shake and a drop,
ok? So we’ve got this. Now I’m going to take this here. The fold phase is part of
our pillowcase. So now I can just fold this up this way. Spin it. I’m actually looking
at some numbers on my mat so I’m at 12 so I’m going to come down here to 32 because
I want about a 40 inch pillowcase now. And I’m looking at the line down here on my
ruler. And I’m also kind of looking at the line across the top to make sure everything
looks as square as possible. And with a good amount of pressure because I’m cutting through
a lot of layers. I’m going to initiate a cut that will be square because my pillowcase
is folded down the here nice and square. Ok, perfect, just like that. Super easy. And now
we are ready to make our French seams. A French seam, you start by putting together the wrong
sides of the fabric or basically the opposite of everything we’ve learned before. So we’re
going to start sewing it like it was finished, just like this. And I’m going to start with
a quarter inch seam allowance and I’m just going to go down. Let me do it this way. I’m
so excited to sew. I’m going to go down and around the pillowcase.
So we’re starting up at the top. Again, on the correct sides of the fabric with a
quarter inch seam allowance. Ok, so we have stitched on the correct sides of the fabric
with that quarter inch seam down and across the bottom so the sides are all connected
now. Here’s the trick for the French seam. So I’m going to now turn this to what would
be right sides together or wrong sides out. We’re going to move our needle position
over to about a half of an inch, maybe even a little larger if you’d like, like a ⅝
garment seam. Get your corners nice before you start. And we’re going to sew this again
and that’s going to enclose the seam allowance we just created. And by doing that we are
now finishing all the edges. So again, no loose fibers over years and years of fantastic
pillowcase usage, right? If you wanted to you could press this right now. I have the
seam allowance to keep me straight. so I feel pretty comfortable with that. And I’m just
going to bring my needle up so I can move it over considerably. And we’re going to
do this again to finish that seam.
Ok so that was that second seam. Just to reiterate wider than the first and all the way around
the side of the bottom. And now we’re going to turn this thing back to right sides out.
And the fun part about this is that, when I first did it I used two quarter inch seam
allowances and all of the threads were still hanging out on the other side from the fabric.
So make sure that second seam is nice and wide. Maybe even ⅝ if that works better
for you. But look at this as we come around. We’ve got our fantastic pillowcase. Give
it a little snap like that. With our trim and our glow in the dark cuff. But I know
based on all the fantastic feedback my fans are sending in that you like the fact that
Rob comes up with a little different approach at Man Sewing. So this is your standard burrito
pillowcase. Here comes a bonus tutorial. Are you ready? Are you seated?
Because BOO! It’s not a pillowcase but it’s an old fashioned Trick R Treat bag. That’s
right Halloween is coming up and you’re going to need something fun to carry all your
loot around in the neighborhood, right? Let me teach you how I did these. Now I know you
know my tricks so this is just raw edge fusible applique. In other words, I’ve used my Heat
N Bond Featherlight to trace. A couple of tricks though. These are all a part of our
free printables. Thanks again, art department. Now the ghost, you can basically trace from
either direction, right? So the ghost I just laid my fusible web on, deployed my sharpie,
and traced around the edges. But when you’re using fusible web, remember it does flip everything.
So I did need to flip my lettering for the word BOO so that it would come out correctly,
right? And in order to do that one of my tricks is I take the printable, just download it
and print it out. And there’s several choices. I think we’ve got five or six different
ones in this one. And then I sharpie marker around the outside edge of what I want to
trace. So that when I’m done I can flip it over and that actually becomes my trace
side so it’s transposed. So that when I lay this down you can see it fits right there
on top. When I cut the letters out now it’s going to be legible. So you’ve got to be
careful. Letters like S and T you can get away with but if it’s an L or a J, boy it’s
going to look pretty darn funny. So that’s the trick. Then you just press them down wherever
you like. And I satin stitched around the edge. Ladies and gentlemen, there is glow
in the dark thread available out there. And that’s exactly what I’ve done around the
edge so there’s another perimeter, a satin stitch. About 2 ½ millimeters wide and about
½ a millimeter long on your satin stitch. And if that seems like a little too much work
or maybe there’s too much ghost for you that way, check out this side. That’s right,
this is just a straight stitch around one of the printables. And let me show you how
I transferred that right onto the right side of the pillowcase. Now of course these markings
and the satin stitch of the ghost were done before I made the pillowcase so that could
be on the other side. But this is our old fashioned waxed tracing paper. It works like
a carbon paper. And you know what if any of these supplies are hard for you to find, we
have a description below the video that has a landing page that has all these supplies
if you ever need. That’s how we do all of our videos. But check this out. So I’m going
to take this and lay my colored side, and I’m choosing a lighter color so it shows
up on the black fabric. I’m going to lay that down. And then I’m going to take my
image, my printable and I’m just going to take, and I like to use a red pen so I can
see where I’ve already worked and traced there. And I’m just going to go ahead and
I’m going to start to go around my ghost. And I’ll just go around the outside of the
ghost real quick so you can see how this works. Of course you would want to trace your eyes
and nose as well. But I’m going to just have to wipe this off. And that’s the benefit
of these wax tracing papers is they really do come off pretty simply. I like to use baby
wipes, the unscented baby wipes will take them off very nicely. As well as you can brush
them off. Another trick if you’re doing a bunch of detailing, you might want to occasionally
go back and re-wax so you can see better. Now it doesn’t show up real dark but it’s
just enough of a faint line that you can see it as you go around. And then the next trick
is when I’m using my sewing machine and this is not free motion, ladies and gentlemen.
What I’m doing is a standard straight stitch with my feed dogs up. And then my trick is
as I come around, like say this is my needle, right? I come around and when I’m doing
a curve about every two or three stitches, I’ll take and I’ll just start to rotate
my fabric. And rotate my fabric as I go so I get a nice arc but I have the benefit of
the feed dogs so that all my stitches look nice and even. So it really couldn’t be
easier than that to jazz up a basic pillowcase to make yourself an awesome Trick R Treat
bag. And I am just dying to find out from all of you, what are you going to be for Halloween
this year? So put it in the comments below and while you’re planning your awesome outfits
for this year’s holiday, I’ll be working on great new projects for you here at Man
Sewing.