Simplicity 2317: always late to the (pajama) party

Yes, I’m still here, though sewing came to a standstill again as I went through tech and opening this week at work. Luckily I still have some things to share that I made during my week off, all the way back at the end of May (feels like forever ago…)

When Karen hosted her pajama (or pyjama, if you speak real English) party a couple months ago, I thought it was a great idea, but pajamas were the furthest thing from my mind and not even anywhere on my project queue. Also, I had a perfectly good pair of pjs already. Well, that was until the weather abruptly turned to something resembling summer and said perfectly good (flannel) pjs were suddenly no longer perfectly good. Turns out I needed a pair of summer pjs, stat!

(As many other pajama-making bloggers have noted, Hello Internets! Also, it seemed somehow indecent to take these pajama pics out on my deck, so I did it inside… why does being in pjs in my backyard make me feel weirder than being in pjs on the internet?)

These came together in literally one day. I made the decision to make summer pjs while still lying in bed in my too-hot winter pjs, remembered I had bought Simplicity 2317 a while ago with the intention of making lounge pants for my husband (yeah, that hasn’t happened), and dug out this piece of random strawberry print knit fabric from Girl Charlee that I’d had for a while but hadn’t figure out what to do with. There was only one yard, so actually most of the day was consumed with trying to get all the pieces to fit in just a yard of directional fabric. I did it, though it took way to much time, single layer cutting, and other fanangling… and oh yeah, the strawberries are upside down on the back of the shorts. Hey, makes it easy to tell which way is the front when I put them on!

Don’t mind my totally ridiculous bike tan – can you tell most of my outside time is spent with my shoulders to the sky? (I will confess to having photoshopped the terrible bike shorts tan line just a bit…)

This pattern ended up being perfect for my summer pjs. I’ve never had a matched top-and-bottom set before, but I kind of like it, and the fabric is so soft and light. I made almost no adjustments, other than omitting the fake fly (I literally didn’t have enough fabric for it). I would probably have preferred a slightly longer length on the shorts, but, you guessed it, not enough fabric. I cut a size 10 in the top and a 14 for the shorts, and made no further adjustments. Hooray for knit garments you never wear out of the house! The waistband is actually a separate piece that’s folded lengthwise to make the elastic casing, and I narrowed it slightly since I had 1 1/4 inch elastic rather than the 1 1/2 inch that’s called for. I made a narrow twin-needle hem on all the openings. The neck and arm holes got a little stretched out from hemming them, but they shaped back up in the wash.

I’m not sure how long these will last, since the knit is pretty light and twin-needle hemming is not always the most durable, but  if they wear out before the weather goes cold again I’ll just have to make another set!

(Pattern review here.)