How to Make a Door Stop from a Pillowcase

We are delighted that our very first collaboration on this lovely new section of our blog is with Cat from the amazing Take Courage Blog who will become a regular contributor over here. We tasked Cat to come up with something lovely made with an old sheet or pillowcase. You can use any old pillowcase or a duvet cover that has been well loved. Thank you Cat (and Chutney). Over to you...

Hello! My name is Cat, and I run a fun little lifestyle blog over at Take Courage. I love nothing more than a good DIY project, and while I’m pretty useless on a sewing machine, this one is so easy I can do it with my eyes closed (although not recommended if you want to keep all 10 fingers!). Here’s how you too can banish those ugly plastic doorstops forever, with something much more pleasing to the eye.

Time needed: 1 hour

You will need

Sewing machine
Iron
Fabric – you don’t need very much, so a half metre scrap or an old pillowcase will be enough
Pins
Scissors
Funnel
Kitty litter or rice or lentils
Needle and thread

Step 1

Cut your fabric – you will need (1) four pieces for the sides, measuring 20 x 15 cm; (2) two squares for the top and bottom, measuring 15 x 15cm; (3) one piece for the handle, measuring 15 x 12cm. Once you’ve got all seven pieces, give them a good once-over with the iron.

Step 2

Take your handle piece to one side. Right-side down, fold over the long edges by about 1cm and run over with the iron. Then fold in half and again run over with the iron. You should now have a neat rectangle.

Step 3

Now to construct the sides of your door stop. Take two side pieces and, right sides together, pin together the long edge on the right. Straight stitch the edge with a 1.5cm seam allowance. Then take another side piece and sew in the same way until you have a long strip of four side pieces stitched together.

Step 4

Join the two ends together, so you end up with an inside-out cube, without a top and bottom.

Step 5

Back to the handle. Carefully top stitch along the inside of the open edge. Then pin the short sides to the centre of one of your squares, right sides up, to form the top of your door stop. Sew together, using a neat straight stitch.

Step 6

Now the tricky part! With the right sides facing inwards, stitch on the top and bottom using a 1.5cm seam allowance. The best way of doing this, I found, is to pin and then stitch each of the four sides of the square separately – slowly, one at a time. And be careful not to get any unwanted fabric caught under the foot of your sewing machine!

Step 7

On the very last side, leave a hole of about 1.5 inches (best to leave the hole for the bottom of the door stop, rather than the top as I did – d’oh!).

Step 8

Pull the fabric in on itself through the hole so that it’s no longer inside out.

Step 9

Using a funnel, fill the fabric cube (or cuboid, if you want to be picky about it…) with kitty litter (clean, of course!), rice or lentils, or anything else that’s dry and hanging around your house, until it’s nice and plump. If you want to be extra fancy, you could add some lavender to the mix so that your door stop smells nice.