Duvet cover

.A couple of years ago a good friend of mine convinced me to buy a duvet cover.   The cover consisted of a nice fuzzy size that would keep me warm in the winter and a silk-ish type of side that would keep me cool in the winter.  On that convincing argument I bought one.   If I didn’t know any better I would have thought she worked for Bed Bath and Beyond.  What I failed to realize is that if you have a nice “fuzzy side” and a “silky cool” side and in between those two is a duvet filled with goose down what you get is a heavy blanket.  This heavy blanket, despite it’s temperature cooling side does little good in the summer.  As if that wasn’t enough, it was nearly 1 and 1/2 times as big as the duvet, even though I bought the correct size for my duvet.   My only consolation is that she bought one too and was even less happy with it than I was.  While I was able to alter the size of mine to better accommodate my duvet, she ran into the annoying attribute of the “fuzz” dislodging its self in random places in her bedroom.  There was vindication in that.  Regardless of the grievances I had toward the blanket and my friend toward it’s purchase, it was a fun adventure with a friend I will enjoy for a life time.

However, that is not the point of this post.  Over the summer I casually looked around for a better duvet cover that would better survive my needs.  The trouble is they are quite expensive, I don’t like them, AND I’m in the the whole idea of DIY.   My first trip to find material was to a local fabric shop.  I was so overwhelmed with the fabric and I didn’t have a clue as to what to buy.  As if that wasn’t bad enough I forgot to bring the measurements so getting the right size would be difficult.  I tried counting the 1 foot by 1 foot squares on the floor of the store.  In my head I was thinking that if 1 yard is 3 feet and my duvet is about this big….  After over an hour in the store I gave up.

A few weeks later I got a moment of inspiration.  I found a web site that sold fabric.  Since I was at home I could get the measurements I needed.  I ordered all the fabric I needed to not only make a duvet cover but to also make a new pillow case and a fitted sheet.

For the duvet cover I opted for this Flannel Hunter Green at 108″ wide:

For the fitted sheet I opted for a sort of a print.  It doesn’t look like it but it’s a dark green leopard type print.

Finally the pillow case fabric was a cloud  type of pattern (no it’s not pink, that’s white with wisps of blue):

It took a lot longer for the fabric to arrive than I thought it would, but once it was I got to work.  The first thingI wanted to create was the pillow case.  It was the easiest to make.  All I had to do was take the current pillow case apart to get good dimensions and sew up a new one.  I wanted to make two pillow cases, but I only bought enough for one I found out later:

I then thought that the fitted sheet would be the next easiest to make.  Only I kinda goofed when buying the fabric.  The fabric was only 43″ wide.  A full size bed is better than that.  I chalked that up to not paying attention.  So I started on the duvet cover it’s self.  The problem was I calculated for only ONE side of the cover with a little extra in case I goofed.  Sadly the extra I bought was not enough to cover both sides.  Crap!  Not to be defeated, I looked at adding all the fabric together including the scraps from the pillow case.  The result was:

All in all I think it turned out great!