On-the-Fly Pillowcase Top Not-a-Tutorial

How to make a pillowcase style top for yourself, desiging as you go.

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One of the ways I like to learn things is to kind of get myself in over my head and see what happens.

Last week’s Iron Craft challenge, which I totally missed, was to create something blue. I had this great blue batik fabric I knew I wanted to use.

I wanted to make a beach cover but there was not enough fabric. I discovered there was enough — and a little extra — to wrap around my body so I decided I wanted to make a sort of pillowcase top for myself.How to make a pillowcase style top for yourself, desiging as you go.

Not finding a pattern like what I was looking for, I decided to wing it.

This is not a tutorial because I was designing at the machine, sewing, trying on, cutting, sewing some more, trying on again, making mistakes and fixing them as I went.

If You Want to Make Your Own

I started out by sewing the fabric into a tube. I decided I wanted the seam to be at the back.using a dress to cut the armholes.

I used a comfortable dress to cut armholes just on the back of the shirt and sewed casings at the top to run a ribbon through, but soon discovered there was way too much fabric in the front.

I thought cutting armholes would help, and it did, but they ended up way too big.

So I ended up taking fabric in along the sides, little by little, until I got to a volume I could live with.

Then it was time to sew the bottom hem and the front and back edges along the armholes. And trim out some fabric from the side seams.diy pillowcase top

I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, and I’m proud of myself for figuring out how to make it work.

This was a pretty messy and wasteful project fabric-wise, but it was actually fun to know what I wanted to end result to be and just keep sewing and tinkering until I got there.

Do you always follow patterns or would you rather just wing it sometimes? I’d love to know what you think.


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