Summer PJ’s

It was late August, the beginning of the Bay Area’s warm season, when Mr. Trizzle came home with new doctor’s orders: sleepwear must include long sleeves and long pants.  He had some long underwear shirts and flannel pajama pants.  Neither of those would do for warm nights.

goldenrail to the rescue!  (Ok, so it’s really not a rescue at all, and, as he likes to point out daily, Mr. Trizzle can get along fine without me.  However, I like to feel useful, so just humor me, ok?)  I headed to my favorite little getaway, the Jo-Ann store two blocks away, and set to work finding what I needed to execute my plan.

The basic pajama set pattern was pretty easy to find, but the fabric proved more difficult.  I wanted a nice gauze, in a color that would look good on Mr. Trizzle.  I sort of had my heart set on white.  Unfortunately, the bolt of white obviously didn’t have enough for the whole outfit.

“Maybe I can get the shirt out of white and use something else for the pants,” I thought to myself.  So I took the white and grabbed some beige and headed to the cutting table.  The white was a quarter yard short for the shirt, and in two pieces.  I took it anyway.  I could tell this project was going to be more interesting then I planned.

Getting the front and back out of the large piece of white wasn’t too difficult.  Both were nice cut-on-the-fold pieces and I managed to make more folds by doing the old fold-both-sides-into-the middle-instead-of-folding-in-half trick.  But the other piece was shorter than the sleeves.  Dognabit!

Then I found a nice surprise in my shopping bag.  Less beige than I needed.  The cutting table lady cut it shorter than I asked.  Splendid.  Well, I do love a challenge, and this was turning into quite the challenge. 

With some interesting finagling of the pattern pieces, I managed to just barely squeeze out the four pants pieces.   Then the real fun began.  I cut a long strip from the remainder of the beige and sewed it onto the bottom of the too-short white piece.  The gauze lines on the white went vertical and those of the brown horizontal.  Perfect.  Then I laid out the sleeve piece, which now fit, and I cut.  Final result, the sleeves look like they have neat little beige cuffs, perfectly coordinated with the pants.

I added a drawstring to the waistband (not part of the pattern, but a rather essential pajama pant piece) and made it white to coordinate with the top.  There, a beautiful, light-weight, long-sleeved, long-pants pajama outfit.  Mr. Trizzle must like it a lot, because he wears it every night.  He said he feels sort of like an African king in it.  He does kind of look like one in it. :)

 

Here’s a better shot of the sleeve “cuff.”  It looks like it’s a different color because Mr. Trizzle (who doesn’t need a woman to help him with the laundry) accidentally bleached the shirt, which changed the beige into a sort of greenish tinged color.

That was one of the most fun sewing adventures I’d had all summer.  But then, making something for someone else is always the most fun, especially when it’s a surprise.  :D