More Pictures Below
Pattern: My favorite brand for light cotton PJ’s, Emily and Fin, stopped making them! So I drafted a set using an old pair for the pattern 🙂
Fabric:
Face: Michael Miller – Into the Woods – Nite – DC7727 NITE, 2 yds
Piping: Artisan Shot Cotton 40171 42 Yellow/Grey, ~1/4 yard
Collar Interfacing: I don’t remember, but whatever is standard. A light, non-fusible
I wanted something with a crisper hand, and obviously quilters cotton fits that nicely! My big gripe with the Emily and Fin fabrics is that they’re so light, they get very deep and intractable wrinkles in them. The new set of PJ’s are still very comfy, but don’t hold wrinkles.
I didn’t put cord in the piping, so it’s flat and crisp.
Project Date Range: July-August 2022
Thoughts: As is so often the case when I get into making something modern, whatever I paid for the original set of pajamas, it was not enough! There are so many fiddly pieces to cut and work with, and it makes me intensely curious about the workflow of modern factory clothing production. How do they cut all the pieces and move them from cutting into sewing? A research rabbit hole for another day!
This project was my first using a serger for all internal seams, so that was the big learning curve. Speaking of curves, they were much trickier than I expected on the serger. On a normal sewing machine, you leave the curve in its natural shape as it feeds, but that did not work at all on the serger; I ended up pulling the curves straight to feed them, which I’ve always been taught is a big no-no, but everything lays quite nicely, so it seems to have worked.
My biggest area I wish I had attended to a bit more was the piping. I got sloppy with the depth of it, and it shows. I also should have accounted for the directional nature of the face fabric I chose in calculating my needed yardage; I had to seam the 2 back pieces on the PJ bottoms and had to line the pockets with the yellow because I simply did not have enough of the fox fabric.
Thread & Thrum 