I was thrilled when I realized that the blocks in my Fish On Quilt Pattern are nearly perfectly sized to be standard sized pillow shams. My 3 and 5 year old little boys share a bedroom and I knew I wanted to make matching shams for their beds. To me, they just scream boyhood and it was fun to branch out and make Fish On blocks in more earthy tones. 
Making the shams was a fairly straightforward process to figure out. I just added a 2.5" strip to the top and bottom of the block to get to the right dimensions for a standard size pillow. I wanted the shams to be fully lined inside, so I quilted each pillow front with batting and a backing fabric. On my new Bernina 770, there is a triple stitch (#6) that mimics a chunky hand stitched feel that I've been loving lately. I quilted a 1.5" crosshatch grid that I'm really happy with.
For the back of the shams, I did an envelope style opening. I cut 2 pieces of my main exterior fabric that were the same height as the front. To figure out the width, I just overlapped my pieces by about 5" and cut them so they would be the same as the pillow front when they were overlapped. I cut lining fabric the same dimensions, then with RST, I seamed together the exterior and the lining fabrics of the 2 overlapping back panels. This to created a clean finished edge for both panels. I pressed that seam so the main and lining fabrics were back to back, topstitched .5" from the seam on both pieces. 
I knew for my shams, I wanted to bind the exterior seam of the pillow to create kind of a faux piped look, so I lined everything up WST, so my seam would be on the outside of the pillow. I used binding clips to hold it all together and sewed around the whole pillow with a 1/4" seam allowance.
After the case was sewn all the way around, I bound the seam. I cut 2 3/8" binding for this project. I sewed the binding the back side, then folded it over to the front and edge stitched it down.
I love how these turned out and I hope my boys love them, too! I think it's especially fun that the fish are looking at each other!
If you need the pattern for Fish On, you can find it HERE