This spring I sewed another pillowcase, and with all the experience I’d already gained while sewing my first one ;-) I decided that I needed a challenge. This pillowcase consists entirely of fabric squares, but they are sewn together diagonally. It was a gift for a friend’s baby boy.

(As usual, click on the photos for a bigger version. Here’s the whole set at Flickr.)

This is the layout of squares I came up with. They are then folded and sewn together to form a pillowcase with a diagonal opening in the back.

Unfortunately, this is not the easiest layout possible, and it was quite difficult to sew the sides together because I had to change directions so often. But of course I persevered. Here’s the finished pillow, front and back:

There are no seams along the sides of the pillow, as you can see here:

Of course there is an easier way to sew a pillowcase in this pattern, as was pointed out to me by a friend who also sews. She is good with mathematics and all kinds of crafts and came up with this layout:

The blue squares are the fabric squares, sewn together. You fold along the orange lines and sew together along the red and then the green lines.

Of course, I then had to make my friend a pillowcase of her own, using her great layout idea. This time I used three different fabrics again, but made some of the squares out of smaller sqares. Here’s my layout plan:

For the squares that consist of four smaller squares, I first sewed two long stripes of fabric together.

Then I cut the stripe into rectangles…

… which I then sewed into squares.

This was also my first project in which I pressed the seams open instead of to one side, as recommended by Weeks and Ringle in their book The Modern Quilt Workshop.

I have to agree with the authors that the finished product just looks neater.

Here’s the finished pillow. The fabric is from the Tilda line by Tone Finnanger, by the way.