Nightgowns and Sewing Goals


You see before you my two crazy girls wearing matching fleece nightgowns. I also made another matching nightgown for the daughter of our friends who moved away as well, but I couldn't get a photo with her, because, well, three, four, and five year olds aren't always the most cooperative or logical creatures.

This is the nightgown pattern I drafted from Jalie 2212 a year ago in the fall. This pattern draft works very well - the only change I have made is to swap out the sleeve with one from Jalie 2682. This one fits much better - slim, but not restricting. Clara now fits the size I then drafted for Lucy and Lucy only needed extra length.

Why fleece? I mean, we don't live in the tundra and we have a perfectly working heating system. Well, let me tell you. Lucy has this fleece nightgown that my sister-in-law sent her three years ago. She loves it and wears it all the time. We have to sneak it out of the rotation in the summer. But it is too short now (about tunic length) and the time had come to replace it. Since I had a simple nightgown pattern ready, and I knew that Fabricland had piles of novelty PJ fleece, that's the direction I took. Clara also needed nightgowns as hers were too tight and were splitting at the seams (and she likes nothing better right now than to be just like Lucy).

After I cut out the two nightgowns for my girls, I still had a lot of fabric left over and realized that I could make another nightgown if I split the pattern and gave it a bodice seam. That's how the third nightgown for our friends' daughter came to be (and thus, why I had to make a matching set of PJs for our boys). But even after cutting out the third nightgown, I still had too much fabric to simply recycle, but not enough to merit keeping, so I tossed the idea around a while, googled a bit, and came up with the beret.

And this, of course leads to my sewing goals for this year. Along with my previous goals of trying something new with nearly every sewing project, this year I want to sew every usable bit of every length of fabric I sew. Enough with the half-metres of fabric taking up space in my bins of fabric. If I am sewing the fabric, then I have matching thread in the machine, so I am going to just keep sewing the fabric until I am comfortable with recycling the remains.

In this light, I made Clara another fleece nightgown after I made a fleece pullover for myself (that will come in another post).


Because the fleece is a solid colour, I thought it needed a bit of jazzing up, so I quickly appliqued a butterfly using a scrap f fleece and some hem lace and a button from my mother's stash. Clara thinks it is lovely, and I didn't have any fabric to put away afterward! Hooray!

Comments

Cute nightdresses, and very lofty goals.
Karin said…
They look so cute in matching night gowns. My daughters are 6 and 3 and they still enjoying matching outfits sometimes.
Thanks, Katharine and Karin. We'll see how I do with the goals...

My girls are about to turn 6 and 4, and they feel strongly about each other always. (Sometimes that means being co-conspirators, sometimes it means their bedroom is a wrestling ring.)
That is a good goal--I've been doing it too, lately. Just get it all over with at once. Cute nighties!
gwensews said…
Cute--gowns and children! They look happy and cozy!
Anonymous said…
I love Lucy's expressions!!!

- robin

Popular Posts