Pajama Pants Mini Tutorial

Making your own pajama pants is really easy.

All you need is:

• Spare fabric (I used an old duvet cover.)
• Paper to draw the pattern onto
• Elastic + safety pin

 Here is a tip for the part-time sewers, you don’t need to buy expensive paper for the pattern, you can use ordinary unwanted wallpaper, or I actually use the large roll of craft paper for kids, that I purchase from Asda (Walmart for the US), this roll is great for the kids and me! I used a sewing machine for this project. I will not go into all the steps here because you can follow the link (shown at the bottom of this post) and I don’t have all the photos. I have attached a couple of photos that I took afterwards. (I really should have ironed the pants before taking the photo shown above!)

Basic Steps:

• Place a pair of pants that already fit or a pair of pants that are too small (like my son’s shown in the photo), onto the paper. Fold the pants in half so that you only see one leg. Then draw around the whole piece of the leg.( If you require pajama pants to be the same size, then just add enough extra around your drawn pattern so that you have room for a hem and an elastic waist casing. The general consensus is about an extra half inch for the hems and an extra one and a half for the waist. If you need the pajama pants to be longer, then measure the waist and leg length of the person who will be wearing these trousers and add accordingly. Once you know what length of leg you need, just make sure that your pattern matches that amount not forgetting to add extra for the hem and waist.)
• Once you have a one leg pattern on a piece of paper, this can be used for the whole of the pajama pants.
• Place the pattern onto your fabric and cut out two pieces.
• Then flip the pattern over and cut out two more pieces.(You now have four pieces of cut out fabric.)
• Then using the steps from either the tutorial I gave you , or find another tutorial, there are plenty out there on the internet, start sewing the pieces together.(Basically just follow the way that your original pants are sewn together.)
• Once the pieces are sewn together you can then start making the waist casing. Leave a space so that you can insert the elastic, use a safety pin to thread the elastic into the space.
• Then sew the pajama pants hems at the bottom.

Voila, there you have a new pair of pajama pants.

I have actually made a pair for myself (following similar instructions) a while back. This is because I can never find pajama pants long enough for myself, because I have long legs. Whenever I shop for clothes, I have to buy long length pants when there is the option, but it is extremely rare to find pajama pants in a choice of long length!  This overall project only took me about an hour! No complicated buttons or extras, just simple straight forward sewing. It is easier than you think, so why not give it a try. A good way to upcycle those duvet covers like I did too! If the link below is no longer working just google search for another tutorial there are plenty out there. Good Luck.

I have seen many tutorials about doing this from other websites and they made it look so easy! Here is a link to the website I recently found:

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Sew-Your-Own-Pajama-Pants/

This week I am linking this post with the following link parties / blog hops:

  

I am featured at Golden Butterflyz Blog

Yeah I have just been featured! The lovely Miriam from Golden Butterflyz Blog has written a post about my craft blog, here is the link: goldenbutterflyz.blogspot.com

Please pop over to see what she had to say about me and my blog and also to have a nosy around her blog. I found Miriam's Blog really useful for me because she had some great advice on how to handle 'curly hair'. My daughter has naturally curly hair and she had written some posts on this as her hair is also naturally curly! I find her posts really interesting and informative, please pop by to have a look for yourself.

Diaper Box Storage

Above is a photograph of my makeover that I did using a special disney princess diaper box that I saved, I think it was the brand 'Huggies'. It originally came with a lid and I used to store the diapers/nappies from my youngest, she is 4 now! It was quite a sturdy box and I was using it to store my children's books. It was getting a bit battered looking so I decided to give it a makeover. Below are some photographs of the original box.

I used some sticky back plastic which I already had in the house to cover the box. I now have a lovely storage box which could be currently used as it is for storing books or could be used as shelving. Below are photographs of the completed storage box.

Do you recognise the sticky back plastic? It is the same one I used for my other project: Plug Organizer Tutorial

I think it came our really well and looks quite trendy now!

This week I am linking this post with the following link parties / blog hops: