How to Sew a Pillowcase with the Burrito Method

Fold the fabric the way it came off the bolt, selvage to selvage, and lay it on the cutting mat. Line the ruler up on the 24 inch mark and cut the main body straight across the full width of the fabric. Move the ruler to 12 inches and cut the cuff the same way. The accent strip is 2 inches across the width.

All three pieces come out of roughly a yard. Those numbers give a standard pillowcase. For a king size, add six to eight inches to the body strip and leave the cuff and accent alone.

Fold the accent strip in half down its length, wrong sides together, and press it. Open the main body out on the table, pretty side up, a selvage at each end. Lay the folded accent strip along the top raw edge with the fold pointing down into the body, then lay the cuff face down over both.

Line every raw edge up along that one long edge. Clip through all the layers working right to left, not feeding clips in toward the seam. You are about to roll this whole stack, and clips set that way come off without fighting you.

Push the cuff away from you and start rolling the main body up toward the clipped edge. Roll it tight and stop when the roll reaches the seam line. You end up with a long compact tube sitting right below the clipped edge.

Bring the free edge of the cuff down over that tube, around the back and up to meet the clipped edge, then grab all the layers together. Kelly Aulson calls the result a weird little burrito, which is what it looks like. Clip it closed along the whole length, edge square, no wrinkles caught underneath.

Carry the roll to the machine and sew a quarter inch seam down the clipped edge. You are stitching through the cuff, the accent strip, the body and the wrapped cuff again, so hold a steady speed and let the feed dogs pull instead of tugging the fabric along.

Take each clip off as it comes up to the presser foot. Keep the raw edges against your seam guide the whole way. This is the only seam holding the cuff on, so a straight line here is what makes the finished band lie flat.

Reach into one open end of the tube, find the rolled body fabric and pull it back out through the cuff. It comes a few inches at a time with a bit of tugging, until the whole case is right side out.

Look at the cuff seam once it is through. The accent strip sits between the cuff and the body with no raw edge showing on either side, and the seam itself is trapped inside the cuff where nothing can fray it.

Lay the case out flat and press the whole length, cuff seam included. Fold it in half so the two sides stack, which makes it far easier to handle on the mat.

The selvages are still on both ends and they are rarely the same length. Line one ruler line up on the cuff seam so the cut stays square to it, then trim with the rotary cutter far enough in that no selvage is left in the case. Repeat on the other side. Selvage caught in a seam puckers after the first wash.

Fold the case wrong sides together, the way it would sit on a pillow. It feels backwards, and that is the point. Match the cuff seam on one side to the cuff seam on the other, pin it, and sew a quarter inch seam down the open side and across the bottom.

Trim that allowance back to about an eighth of an inch, turn the case inside out and press the seam open. Sew the same side and bottom again a quarter inch in, using the presser foot edge as the guide. The second pass shuts the raw edge inside.

Turn the case right side out one last time and press the cuff flat. Run a finger around the inside seams. There is no raw edge at the side, at the bottom or at the cuff, and none of it needed a serger or a zigzag.

Kelly Aulson topstitched the accent strip down on her second case, which holds the strip against the body instead of letting it flip up. That is a preference rather than a step, so make one each way and see which you keep.