Bed linen audit...

With the hot weather we've been having I have finally managed to persuade the children to give me all their blankets and quilts to wash and store.  This has prompted me to do a long overdue audit of our bed linen.

Too many mismatched sets and a lot of sheets in dire need of disposing of.  I had moved a lot of sheets into a box a while ago, and decided to go through this as well.  I found a whole pile of queen size flat sheets that we were never ever going to use so I decided to re-purpose them.  We never use a top sheet, just a quilt in the winter, or the quilt cover in the summer.

I've found that queen flat sheets (and probably double as well) are just the right size to convert to single fitted sheets.  Here's how...

1.  Measure an existing fitted sheet for a guide.  Mine was 191 cm long, 92 cm wide and 29 cm deep.

2.  Trim your queen flat sheet to a rectangle that matches your measurements (plus hems).  I trimmed off 70 cm from the width and 6 cm from the length then hemmed both edges.

3.  Mark a 29 cm square on all four corners.

4.  Match the pins to form a triangle then sew down the line.

5.  Trim off this triangle - this forms the fitted corner.

6.  Now you add your elastic - I used 35 cm of elastic stretched over 60 cm and pinned in quarters to make stretching easy.

7.  Then sew the elastic to the hem (I used a zig zag stitch) stretching as you stitch.

And - voila - a fitted sheet from a queen flat sheet.  The off cut from the side can be used to make a matching pillowcase if you choose - I already had matching ones.

One down - three to go.