This week my daughter called asking if she could come over and use my sewing machine to recover some pillows. Well, sure! She knows I would never say no to a craft project. So she showed up with her old pillows, her new fabric, and we got busy!

We chose a type of pillow cover called an “Envelope” pillow cover. This is a nice simple method because it’s made with a folded flap type of opening that let’s you just stick your old pillow inside without having to sew it shut. This also means you can take the pillow that’s stuffed inside back out again if you want to wash the cover.

How To Sew An Envelope Pillow Cover

You will need:

An old pillow or a pillow insert from the fabric store
Fabric of your choice (we covered two pillow with 1 yard of fabric)
Measuring tape or yardstick
Thread
Scissors
Sewing Machine

If you are recovering an old pillow you will have to start out with some math and measuring. One of the pillows we transformed was this lovely fish pillow.

Measure the width of your pillow and add one more inch.  Measure the height of your pillow and multiply by 2.5. These two measurements will be the width and the length of the rectangle you will cut from your fabric. Example: If you are covering a 15″ square pillow, you need to cut a rectangle 16″ x 37-1/2″

Remember – you want your piece to be one inch wider and two and half times longer than the pillow you are covering.

Now that you have cut your piece of fabric, lay it flat with the right side of the fabric facing up. Fold up from the bottom, about 1/3 of the fabric.  Then fold the raw edge down again about 1/3.

Then take the top edge of the fabric and fold it down so it covers about half of your last fold.

At this point, you might want to lay your pillow on top and eyeball it to see if it looks like you’ve got about the right size for your cover.  Make any adjustments to the folds you think necessary.

Pin the side edges and then sew a seam down each side of the rectangle, using a 1/2″ seam allowance. Turn the pillow cover right side out and stuff your old pillow inside. You can add a couple of buttons for a decorative accent too. And now there’s no more fish pillow!

Once we got the hang of it, we cranked out four more pillows.  The most time is spent making sure you have the right measurements and cutting out your fabric.  Once you’ve got that part done, you just have to make three folds, sew two seams, and your cover is complete!

Once you have the cover on, you can decide if you want to have the opening on the front side (which looks the best if you accent it with some buttons), or you can set your pillow with the flap opening in the back so the pillow looks smooth on the front.  It’s up to you!

Update May, 2016: Here’s another set of pillows that were covered using this method.  These were a couple of large pillows that came with my sofa but I wanted to use them in my basement family room on my black futon instead.  Now they’re all updated with some bold colors that will fit that color scheme.  And because these are envelope pillow covers, I can easily take them off at any time if I want to use the pillows in their original form again, or if I want to recover them for some other color scheme