Pajamas!


Very good friends of ours moved away between Christmas and New Year's. We used to live around the corner from each other, then we moved five blocks away and now they live a 45 minute drive away. Anyway, we had plans to spend the night with them in their new house on New Year's Eve, and my kids were needing new PJs, so I got it into my head to make matching PJs for the boys (and matching nightgowns for the girls - that will come later).

I wanted to make knit PJs, but it is next to impossible to find printed interlock or jersey that isn't baby-themed. So I spent a good chunk of time at the local Fabricland staring at all of the printed flannel. Seriously, I think I spent more than 45 minutes wandering around and around the racks of flannel. There just wasn't anything that would suit these boys who like bright colours and have parents who strive to not surround them with gender stereotypes. I ended up buying this absolutely gorgeous yarn-dyed plaid flannel. It is thick and luxurious. One of the nicest fabrics I have ever purchased. Luckily it was 50% off.

Of course, the plaid is uneven and has one direction of stripe far more prominent than the other, and no stretch whatsoever. I was concerned about the stretch because I intended to use Simplicity 9949 (previously used for Peter's Halloween costume), which has a tapered leg that I thought might be restrictive in a non-stretch fabric. So what did I do? I cut it on the bias! And then, after trying to figure out which way I wanted the dominant strips to go and struggling through and evening of cutting out the pieces and attempting to get them to match (if you notice, one boy's pants have the V pointing up and one has the V pointing down - oops!), I decided to sew the crotch seam and the outer leg seams flat-felled. I do like to make my life as complicated as possible.

What I didn't realize until part way through one seam is that the flat-felling messed up all of my careful plaid matching! LOL. So the boys' pants have plaids that match (or come very close to matching) on the INSIDE!! Oh well.

Clara helped me pick out the interlock used for the shirts. I bought it at Dressew and it is definitely not the best quality, but it was significantly less expensive than anything at Fabricland. The pattern here is Kwik Sew 3234 (previously used for PJs). I really like this shirt. Peter has moved up to the Small, but I cut the neck at XL because I wasn't confident that this interlock would be stretchy enough.

Next Up: Fleece nightgowns!

Comments

Bias plaid matching on boys' pajama pants--I am impressed!
Thanks! I just couldn't leave well enough alone.

On the upside, since I didn't know how much fabric to buy for bias cut PJs, I have enough left over for a little girl's dress. Unfortunately, not enough for two dresses.

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