How To Sew A Duvet Cover With Contrast Edge Trim

Last night, I crossed a big project off of my “to do” list for the bedroom. I finished sewing the duvet cover for the bed. So now, all of the bedding is officially finished, and my beautiful bird fabric has a much bigger presence in the room.

I started with my face fabric — the bird fabric. I cut two lengths of fabric to 100″ for my queen-sized duvet cover. I cut them much longer than I needed for the finished length, but I wanted to allow plenty of extra because I had to match the patterns when I sewed these together, and you always lose a bit of fabric when matching patterns. One piece remained whole. On the second piece, I had to cut it in half lengthwise.

And then I placed the whole piece face up on my work table…

And then I pinned one of the half pieces to each side, making sure to match the patterns. (Tiger had no interest in letting me work. He wanted attention, so he made this a bit more challenging for me. 😀 )

I won’t go into detail about how to match patterns because there are many videos on YouTube showing the process of matching patterns. Once I had them pinned together, I sewed those three pieces together with the necessary stitch width to match the patterns. Again, I’ll refer you to YouTube to learn how to match patterns in patterned fabric.

I repeated that same process with the fabric for the back of the duvet cover. This one was easier because it’s a solid fabric, so there was no need to match patterns. Once I had both the top and the bottom pieces of the duvet cover sewn, I used my steam iron to iron the seams open and flat.

On the back piece, I measured 10 inches from the bottom and drew a line. And then I cut along this line. This would create the opening for inserting the duvet into the finished duvet cover.

And then after I cut along this line, I put a double 3/4″ fold in each piece where they met and sewed that double fold into place.

Here you can see where I pinned that double fold into place on the narrow piece, but I had flipped it so that it was easier to measure, pin, and iron with that edge closer to me.

I should have done this next step before I cut that top 10 inches off, but I meausured and marked for my finished width. I didn’t need the whole two widths of fabric for a queen size duvet cover. My duvet was 88″ wide, so I cut the bottom of the duvet to 90″ wide to leave room for my contrast trim on the edge, which would be 1″ wide.

I repeated that on the other side, and then cut off the excess fabric.

After sewing the hem in both pieces where the opening on the back piece would be, I overlapped them about 1.5 inches and pinned them together, and then I cut the finished length of the back piece. My duvet was 88″ square, so I cut the length to 90″ as well. And then I placed that piece face down on my work surface.

And then I spread out the top piece of my duvet cover over that bottom piece, making sure that it was straight, and pinned the two pieces (bottom and top) together along the seams and around all four edges.

And then I used the bottom piece, which had already been cut to size, to cut the top piece to the correct size. I had to flip everything over in order to do this, so I should have laid everything out with the bird fabric on the bottom and the back fabric on top from the beginning. That would have saved me a lot of work.

I never could get everything to lie perfectly flat, but with duvet covers, there’s a little bit of wiggle room, so I didn’t worry about it.

Before I sewed those pieces together, I added ties to all four corners and the middle of the sides, the top, and the bottom. I used cotton tape trim for this, and cut about 10″ strips for each tie.

Then I folded each piece in half and pinned it between the layers of fabric.

I tucked the tie in between the two layers of fabric and then repinned the fabric together.

Once I my ties in place, I sewed the two fabrics together all the way around all four edges with a 1/2″ seam.

Next, I cut the fabric for my contrast edge trim. I needed just over 360″ to go all the way around my duvet cover, so I cut as many strips as I needed for that length. I cut these strips 4″ wide.

Once I had all of my strips cut, I pinned them together as shown below.

And then I sewed them together at a diagonal.

This is a terrible picture. I didn’t realize that my camera didn’t focus. But once you open up that seam, this is what that seam looks like.

The reason they’re sewn together at a diagonal instead of a straight 90-degree seam is because this reduces the bulk. A diagonal seam will spread the bulk of that seam out over a wider area rather than having all of those layers of fabric confined to a much narrower area, which will give a much cleaner look on the finished piece.

Once I had all of my strips sewn together, the seams pressed open, and the excess fabric trimmed, I was ready to iron in the folds. I placed the fabric face down on my work surface…

And then I folded the fabric in half lengthwise and used my steam iron to get a really crisp fold.

And then I opened up the fabric and folded the bottom edge up to that middle crease and pressed it into place.

And then I repeated that process on the top edge.

And then I refolded it along the center crease and pressed it again to give me my finished 1″-wide finished trim.

To attach it to the duvet cover, I simply opened up that trim…

And then I wrapped it around the edge of the duvet cover…

And then I pinned it into place. I continued this process around the entire duvet cover until I got back to the starting point. Once I reached the starting point, I cut the trim about two inches past the starting point, folded it under, and pinned it on top of the starting point trim so that it over lapped about 1 inch.

Once it was pinned all the way around, I sewed the trim into place. I sewed about 1/8″ from the inside edge of the trim.

The last step, which I haven’t done yet, is to add buttonholes and buttons to that overlapping flat on the back piece of the duvet cover. The reason I haven’t done that yet is because, now that we don’t have any fabric stores left in our city (R.I.P. Joann Fabrics), there’s no convenient place where I can just go buy some buttons. So I had to order buttons online, and they haven’t gotten here yet. I don’t want to sew buttonholes in this until I actually have those buttons in hand.

But once I have those buttons in hand, I can finish up this flap so that the two pieces will attach to each other and hold the duvet inside the duvet cover.

But until then, I went ahead and put the duvet inside the duvet cover and just pinned that flap closed. And here’s the (almost) finished duvet cover.

I absolutely love how this turned out, and I’m so glad that the bird fabric has a much bigger presence in the room now.

And with that, the bedding is now completely finished.

I just love this fabric so much, and I’m so glad that I could use more of it in the room.