Union Jack Pillow

I've had a few questions about the Union Jack Pillow I made for Elliott's Room so I thought I'd post about what I did.  I don't really want to call it a tutorial, since I'm certainly no sewing expert.  But this is what I did:

First, I used a regular pillow case to determine the size the pillow would be.  Then I cut the grey background fabric in two rectangles of that size.  One for the front and one for the back.

Then, I cut the striped sections from an old Pottery Barn shower curtain I had in my stash.  I hemmed and hawed about cutting the curtain but realistically, I won't be putting a red and taupe striped curtain up in my bathroom again.  The taupe stripes were the right size for the background X, at least to my eye.

I hemmed the long, unfinished sides of the stripes and then ironed, pinned and sewed them in place.  I did the same thing with the red stripes, cutting them slightly wider and attaching them to the front of the pillow in a cross pattern.

Once I had completed the front of the pillow, I made an envelope out of the back.  That way I wouldn't have to do any hand stitching and the pillow insert could be removed and the cover washed.  This pillow does belong to a ten year old boy after all!  This is how I did the envelope enclosure:

This is how mine turned out:

Again I will say, I'm no expert at sewing.  I still need to stuff it with a fuller pillow.  The one that's in there is just a cheap, thin insert from Ikea.  However, Elliott loves his pillow and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  It's not perfect but maybe yours will be!

xo Meg