Tutorial – REAL Turkish Corners

Christine M. over at Wardrobe Refashion posted a project involving “Faux Turkish Corners“. That started me wondering, what the heck is a non-faux vrais Turkish Corner?

Googled it, found a picture and said “Ah-ha!” That’s a pleated box corner, and my Mom taught me how to make them years and years ago! It was time to refresh my skills, and the dog bed needed refashioning, so I thought I’d make a tutorial on how to make a “Real Turkish Corner”.

There’s no before picture of the dog bed – trust me, it was disgustingly torn up, leaking cedar shavings all over the floor and ready for the trash bin. The only thing I salvaged was the zipper. The new dog bed came courtesy of a remnant from the decorator fabric shop, a large hunk of dark green heavy weight cotton twill that I snagged for a mere $4.00. I trimmed it even, stitched my “Real Turkish Corners” put in the salvaged zipper and filled the bed with cedar shavings. Max loves it.

Then, while I was on a roll, I decided to recover a raggedy pillow for Teen Daughter #2’s room, again with “Real Turkish Corners”.

Here’s the Tutorial.

1. Cut two pieces of fabric the same size, one inch larger than your finished project, with squared corners. For example, if you’re covering a 16″ square pillow form, cut 2 – 17″ square pieces of fabric.

2. Decide how deep you want the finished corner to be, from the top of the pillow to the bottom of the pillow. Divide that depth by 2 and add 1″ for seam allowance. This is your marking depth. Measure the marking depth from each cut edge at the corner and make a mark. At each mark, draw a line perpendicular to the fabric edge that equals 1/2 the depth.

3. Fold the corner in half, right sides together, lining up your marked lines. Stitch along the line.

4. Open up the corner, line up the point with the seam you just made and press flat. Stitch 1/8″ from the edge to hold the fold in place.

5. Repeat for all four corners on both pieces of fabric, eight total.

6. Place the two pieces of fabric right sides together, lining up the corner seam lines. Stitch around the entire piece with a 1/2″ seam, leaving one side open for turning. Trim the corners if you wish.

7. Turn. Stuff as you please, and finish off the opening by either blind stitching or by adding a zipper.