Pillow Case Dress Tutorial – For Free

So a friend put me up to sewing a pillow case dress recently. I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I set out about figuring out and finding tutorials for pillow case dresses. It’s hard to find a free pillow case dress tutorial, but I managed to find two. And then it kind of rolled on from there.

I didn’t have the right color thread for the pillow case dress. So I had to make a pillow case dress (and document it for this tutorial) using a completely wrong color thread. I managed, and the thread is hidden. Nobody can see that I used white thread on a completely blue dress. I’m quite proud of myself.

The other thing with this pillow case dress is that I didn’t have bias binding. And I simply don’t have the money to go buy all those things right now. So my pillow case dress is made with my own bias binding that I made and with the wrong color thread.

Well, the dress turned out so well that I thought I would set out to write a pillow case dress tutorial for those who want to try and make a dress. With the added benefit that if you don’t have a serger or the right color thread, it’s no problem. You can follow the pillow case dress tutorial below:

Step one. My friend gave me a pillow case and said “See what you can do with this”. The most important thing to remember is When you work with anything, you have to lay it out on a straight, flat surface. So I cleared my dining room table as I have no work room and I laid out the pillow case on the table, ready to cut the dress.

I measured on the open part (top) a two inch seam for the ribbon at the top of the dress and cut it accordingly.

The next thing I did was measure four inches down (length wise on the pillow case) and two inches across (width wise). I then drew a nice arm hole and cut the arms for the dress. I don’t have a serger so I used my sewing machine to sew a zigzag stitch on the pillow case and all around.

The next thing I did was take two pieces of fabric that I measured wide enough for bias binding and cut it according to the length of the arm holes. I then zig zag sewed and ironed my bias binding that I made myself. For more on how to make bias binding you can click on the easy bias binding tutorial link to take you to my page about easy bias binding.

I did the same type of thing for the bottom seam and the seam at the top where the ribbon was going to go through. Only over here I sewed two strips with seams on them that I could use at the top by the neck and the bottom around the dress. I used white thread on a blue and white background to do that.

Carefully, I sewed the bias binding around the arm. I then cut open the bottom of the pillow case, zig zagged it and sewed a seam on the outside (wrong way) of the pillow case, instead of inside , and sewed on the strip of fabric I cut for that over the seam. This way, the seam is hidden by the strip of fabric and any sewing done is hidden too from the inside. This is especially helpful when you don’t have a serger to make it look neat.

I did the same again with the top. I sewed a seam on the outside of the dress and put the strip on for the top of the dress. I made sure that any bias binding that was left was tucked in under the strip I’m sewing and that the bias binding was worked off by a zigzag stitch as well. Remember when you do this part to make sure that you don’t sew the ends of the strip to the pillow case. You need the strip to be open to thread through the ribbon.

The last thing I did was thread through the ribbon and there we go! One pillow case made. Two tutorials read and not followed. I got this down. To enhance the pillow case dress I’m going to add some applique to the dress. You can follow how to applique by clicking on the link “how to applique”.

I hope you enjoyed this pillow case tutorial and that you will be able to use it in your sewing. I officially made a dress from a pillow case! Wow! Absolutely SO impressed with myself right now.

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