Every year, when the weather turns cooler, thoughts of making pajama bottoms for the family swirl around my brain. And every year the idea remains an idea until the weather begins to warm and I decide it no longer makes sense to sew warm flannel pajamas as Spring approaches. But this year would be different. This year the yards of flannel fabric I had bought years earlier would be put to good use.
It’s been at least three years (maybe longer) since I last made pajamas for the kids. The first time I made them it seemed a like a pretty straightforward project. I mean, the pattern says “easy.” Pajamas are often suggested as a great first garment to sew. “How hard can it be?,” asked the right side of my brain.
Well, when it was all sewed and done, the left side of my brain told me it cost way more to make pajamas than to buy them at the store due to way too many hours seam ripping because I didn’t follow the instructions properly, and just generally being an inexperienced, slow sewer. But this realization did not materialize before I had bought several yards of fabric and notions on sale at Joann to make even more pajamas, which would sit in my closet, mocking me.
However, sewing is an activity I love, and enough time had passed for my brain to again swim with thoughts of warm, comfy hand sewn pjs that would come together effortlessly. Plus my daughter had been asking for new pajamas—repeatedly. Repeatedly I told her I would make her some. The determination to put to use the yardage I had selected years earlier (plus some new prints for my son), follow through on the promises made to my daughter, and become a better sewer finally brought me to action.
The first thing I did was wash my fabric, fold it and set it aside. Next, I found my patterns, also from Joann. There are free, downloadable options online, which can be convenient, but there is a bit of work involved in printing out the pattern, trimming the margins and taping it together.
The next thing I did was got busy tracing the patterns I would need for myself, my son, and my daughter—three different sizes. Before watching a Creativebug video by Liesl Gibson, I did not know about pattern tracing. If you don’t know about pattern tracing, it’s a great way to keep the original pattern intact to use later. Once you cut an original pattern, you are left with only that size to use and would have to buy or reprint a new one to make a different size. I used tracing paper I bought in a roll from Amazon and it works great.
Once the patterns had been traced the next step was to cut the pattern. Sadly (for me), there was not enough yardage to cut my size from some of the patterns I had originally purchased for me, so my daughter, happily, gots those patterns, and I got a cute woodland print (originally purchased for her—she’s eight).
Pinning the patterns and cutting them out is one of the most important and time intensive parts of sewing. It’s especially important to pin and cut the patterns in the right direction, or you might end up with a finished garment with the fabric design facing in the wrong direction. This I learned the hard way.
Using a rotary cutter has been a game changer for me when cutting patterns that are mostly straight edges, so this time around, the cutting went a lot faster.
The first pair of pajamas I cut (and sewed) were for me. It was going along pretty nicely until I got to the drawstring and elastic. The directions were pretty unclear, so the process took three separate efforts before I finally got it right. In between the start and finish of this project, my daughter also “needed” a costume for one of her American Girl dolls, so I stopped what I was doing and sewed her an outfit. This is not very relevant to this story, except that it took me a day longer to finish the pjs than it would have taken otherwise.
The finished bottoms came out pretty great. Two things I will change for the next pair: adjusting the crotch length (they are bit too long in that area) and making sure any fabric designs are in the correct direction. But overall, they are comfy and worth the effort.
The next project was for my son. Two pairs for him came together in one day. More about that in a future post.
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