How to make a duvet cover

By Jane

Make Life Easy

Need an extra duvet cover or two? Save your pennies and make your own from scraps of fabric. I used one largish piece for the centre and smaller pieces for the top, bottom and sides, for a patchwork effect. I had a spare sheet, so I used that for the underside.

Scraps of fabric

You’ll need:

Section of fabric pieces
1 sheet (for the back)
Dome fasteners or Velcro
Machine thread
Scissors, pins, tape measure
Iron and ironing board
Sewing machine (I used a Brother NV950)

First, measure your insert. Mine measured 2m long x 140cm wide. Add an extra 2.5 cm (1 inch) to the sides and top and an extra 5 cm (2 inches) to the bottom to get your front measurement.

Make up your front piece by sewing panels of fabric to the top, bottom and sides of your central piece. Start by adding a top and bottom piece to your central fabric. Don’t worry about having the measurements exactly right at this stage – you will cut your fabric to size later.

Join the top and bottom pieces to your central piece first.

For a really nice professional-looking finish, you could use French seams so that no raw edges of fabric will be visible anywhere. Though frankly, you won’t see the seams anyway – they are on the inside – so for this project I didn’t bother.

Sew your seams with a 6mm (¼ inch) allowance. Trim the seams neatly, open them out and iron flat. You can overlock the edges if desired.

Your next step is to attach the side pieces.

Step 2 is to attach the side pieces to your central piece.

Once the sides are attached, measure your front piece and mark, with pins, where you are to cut based on your initial duvet measurements. Cut to size.

Cut your sheet to size too. It should measure the same size as your duvet cover front piece. Hem the bottom edges of both your sheet and your front duvet cover (separately), folding the raw edge under once, then once again for a neat finish.

With right sides together, pin the sheet and front duvet cover together and hem around the edges, leaving the bottom edge open. At this stage you can overlook the edges, zig zag the edges or open them out and iron them flat. Overlocking will give a stronger finish and neater appearance, without fraying.

Hand-sew dome fasteners or machine sew Velcro to the bottom edge of your duvet cover. Finished!