PJ Pant Potential

Pajama Pants provide the PERFECT printed fabric for UP-Cycle Sewing! Utilize these soft, knit pants as 'fabric'! Christmas PJ's, sports teams PJ's...brand new OR from thrift stores, provide the perfect, inexpensive solution for neckline finishes on tops and jackets.

See below the garments I've made using PJ Pants....

Salvage the available length.

1. Cut off the waistband (most often elastic), allowing for a seam allowance in case you want to use it...cuffs are a natural place to re-purpose it!

2. Cut the legs apart at the crotch seam, then - through double layer of each leg, cut a long piece as wide as possible.

   As you can see on the blue snowflake pant turned into neckline, center front finish, the side seam of the pant legs were kept intact and then formed the innermost edges of this jacket's application.

   

   The white 'furry' jacket was found at the thrift store, and originally had a knit collar and center front zip. I cut off the collar, took out the zip (saving it, of course) and saw as I draped on the pant leg strip, that the blue was 'asking' for a V neckline on the jacket.

3. I generally attach long pieces like these to a stay-stitched jacket edge by placing a single layer of the pant leg's outside to the wrong side of the jacket. Then, on outermost layer, I turn under the edge and stitch it down as you can see in the close-up below. In this case, I did that stitching with a zigzag stitch.

I taped an episode for It's Sew EZ several years ago about utilizing long strips as neckline/center front finishes. In the video, I also teach the cascading hemline of the UT Vols Grey Jacket.

4.  From the remaining inseam/crotch area, it was easy to 'find' the fabric needed for the deep turn-back cuff finish...

   
   

AND some 1.25" wide strips that were braided to create the waistline trim were easy to cut from the remaining inseam area as well.

On the black hoodie sweatshirt with kangaroo front pocket - I wanted to keep it as a pullover, so after cutting off the hoodie, I folded the neckline area in half, matching center front and back to cut a somewhat deeper neckline.

Truly, I tried several different design ideas, but was unhappy with them, as long tails hanging from the neck looked somewhat 'nautical' and with candy cane PJ pants - that just didn't look right. Looking over creative adventures from my past (many of which ended up in my pattern line), I decided the puckered look achieved with elastic thread in the bottom would be the direction to take on this project.

Click HERE to order one of the few remaining printed 'pattern' booklets.

Click HERE to order this booklet in PDF electronic delivery format.

Here is a closeup of the neckline finish I achieved - soft, scrunchy, yet somewhat 'controlled' by the structure of the elastic thread on the inside of the outermost layer.

In yet another It's Sew Easy Episode, I teach the 'nitty gritty' of how to wind a bobbin with elastic thread.

I used the flat wide elastic waistband as the cuffs. Find a close-up at the left, below. As a 'turned back cuff', I chose to expose some of the wrong side of the sweatshirt fleece. To 'carry through' the solid red trim, I unrolled the jersey knit strip 'yarn' and stretched it a bit as I stitched it down the center to give a splash of color both at the cuffs and around the scrunchy collar as you can see in the 3rd picture below. That BOLT of lengthwise curled jersey knit was a real 'find' at my local JoAnn's Fabric store.

I've done some experimenting with rolled hem edges as well. Here's that video from my YouTube Channel.

Sew... have fun with PJ Pants as you sew creatively!

I NEED YOUR HELP! According to my YouTube Studio, I have 189 videos on my channel!!! (When I seek Kudo's from young folk, I tell them I have a YouTube Channel with now 25K subscribers...) BUT - I'm stumped. I can't seem to come up with more topics for videos....

SEW, PLEASE look over my videos, think what I might know and that YOU want to know so that I can make some more sewing videos to encourage you in YOUR sewing fun. Send me your suggestions by emailing me at: londasews@gmail.com

THANKS in advance.