How to Make a Pillow Cover with Invisible Zipper

Don’t these invisible zipper pillows look like they stepped right out of a high end designer store? Seriously, I’ll never make a throw pillow cover any other way again! Can you believe that the Chiang Mai dragon print one is my second ever invisible zipper attempt? Neat, huh?

By the way the Moroccan trellis print pillow in the first picture is also a DIY. I painted that one with stencils and acrylic paint.

Headsup: If you are like a lot of my friends and don’t sew then maybe you can skip this whole post and head straight to the no sew pillow tutorial or the simpler no zipper envelope pillow, which you can even hand stitch, post. And if you are not a fan of the invisible zipper then I’ve got a regular zipper throw pillow cover tutorial for you.

Materials

For making the pillow I used the sample Chiang Mai dragon fabric that I ordered from Insidefabric.com. More on how to order one for yourself in this how to get designer fabric for a cheap post. The swatch was exactly 18″ x 18″.

For making a 16″ x 16″ pillow you need;

• 2 pieces of 18″ x 18″ fabric (printed one for the front and plain for the back). The extra length is the seam allowance on each end.
• 14″ Invisible zipper in a color that matches your fabric – Got mine at Walmart

I always get a lot of questions on the level of difficultly or sewing experience you need for my fabric posts. For this one, I’d say all you need to know is how to sew a straight line. And yes you do need a sewing machine with a zipper foot, usually comes standard with a good one.

How to Make a Pillow Cover with Invisible Zipper Tutorial

• Place the back side fabric (I’m going to call this the plain fabric from now on to differentiate it from front piece that is printed) on the work surface with the good side facing you.
• On top of it place the front fabric with the print side facing down, away from you.
• As you will be sewing the invisible zipper on the bottom of the pillow, fold the bottom half of the front fabric as show below.
• Place the zipper face down (good side of zipper facing the print side of the fabric) on the bottom side of the front fabric aligning the side of the zipper to the side of the fabric. Note that the locked end of the zipper is at the corner while the open end doesn’t quite reach all the way to the other end of the fabric. That’s on purpose.

• Pin along the edge.

• Unfold the front fabric down and pin the other side of the zipper to the plain fabric in a similar fashion.  See the next pic to see this side.
• Change the foot of the sewing machine to the zipper foot and sew on the back fabric side first.

• Repeat on the print side.

• When you are done it should look like this. Remember we haven’t touched the other sides so the whole thing will look like 2 pieces of fabric attached to each other by the zipper. As the zipper is shorter than the the length of the pillow, on the open end of the zipper the fabric will not be stitched all the way through the corner.

• Again place the good sides of the fabrics facing each other and pin the other sides leaving a one inch seam allowance.

• Open the zipper up a third of the way through or else you won’t be able to turn the pillow cover right side out when done.
• Change to the regular sewing machine foot and sew along the pinned line.
• When you reach the zipper side, sew till the open edge of the zipper. Where the zipper starts turn the fabric and sew over the zipper as shown below. This is to lock the zipper on the open end.

• Cut any extra fabric at the corners and at the seams.

• Open the zipper completely and turn the cover right side out. The zipper lock that we did earlier should look like this. I used lavender thread so it would show prominently in the pics. If you use the same color it should blend in.

• Straighten the corner our with a pencil, insert the pillow form, and enjoy!

Have you made throw pillows? Did you sew them or use fusible tape?