Pillow Case with Scrabble Design

An homage to my favorite game of all time: Scrabble Appliques

One of the sad parts about seeing my son grow up is that he no longer wants much embroidered anymore. He’s too cool for that. But he did allow me to make him this pillow case with his name on it in scrabble tiles. Wasn’t that nice of him? I guess I kept it masculine enough with the beige tiles and black letters.

Wanna a quick tutorial on how to make a pillowcase? I am sure 90% of you will not need this tutorial…….but here goes.

You will need just 1 yard of 44” wide lightweight cotton. Yup, you’ll use the entire yard. And you don’t even need to cut it into two pieces—leave it as is with that side fold. And don’t bother pre-washing. Live dangerously.

It is easier to iron the cuff into place and then unfold it to embroider. Even if you are not going to embroider it, follow these same steps.

So…fold over the edge of the fabric about 1/2” and iron into place. Then fold over another 3” or so….iron again. Then unfold.











Unfold what you just ironed and place some tear away stabilizer on the back: (Do you like how I left my lens in this photo? Idiot.)

Figure out where on the cuff you want your embroidery to go. Then hoop your fabric. For this project I want the scrabble tiles to be centered on that 3 inch cuff area. Using that nice crisp edge you just ironed, and using your hoop template, line up your hoop using one of the lines on  your plastic template as a guide to go along your ironed line. Remember, the area to the right of my crease is the part that will be folded and sewn under. The embroidered area needs to be to the left of my ironed line, as seen below.

Now you need to layout your scrabble tiles on your computer. I used the small 1.5” tiles. (Poor Nathan, his name is not exactly a high-scoring name in Scrabble—only 9 points! If proper names were allowed, that is.)
I use Bernina’s Designer Plus software. I didn’t want all my tiles perfectly straight so I made a few kind of crooked:

If your software or embroidery/sewing machine allows you to group all colors together, do that now. If it doesn’t have that capability, then perhaps you can just jump around through the thread colors so that you can do all the same steps for the scrabble tiles all at once.  My Bernina 830 has this nifty icon that happily saves me lots o’ time. Now I am ready to embroider and appliqué.

I skipped the placement line since I knew I was basically using the entire hoop this time. I starched a piece of beige cotton and then the cutting line is sewn—sorry it’s hard to see here:

Trim away the excess fabric with little applique scissors. Replace hoop in machine, finish stitching the squares. Then change colors for the letters. I went with the classic colors of Scrabble tiles—beige and black. But for a girl….think i might have to do pink or turquoise. Yum. (My Bernina 830 will cut and trim threads between jumps but on little projects I turn that feature off as I like to do it myself. The machine takes a few seconds to pause and trim between jumps which sometimes drives me nuts on these little projects.)

Done with embroidery! Un-hoop your project, tear away excess stabilizer and trim threads.
It think it is funny that each time a project is finished the machine asks me—are you really done or do you want to continue sewing this as a border? Hmmm….don’t think I love this design enough to border an entire skirt or tablecloth with it!

Fold pillow case right sides together and stitch the one side and the bottom closed—I just use a 1/2” seam allowance going around the selvedge—no serging/zig-zag stitch necessary to stop fraying from occuring. Serge the bottom though. Or not. Fold your previously-ironed cuff back into place, iron and pin. See how nice it is to hide your embroidery backside within the cuff?

Sew cuff. See how nice it looks on the inside?

I hope my 13-yr old son loves it and consequently that he’ll become a better speller sleeping on this.