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Operation Pajama Drawer: A Sort of Long Time Ago …

A sort of long time ago, in a town kind of far away, a sewing momma bought some Star Wars fabric for her two Younglings. The fabric went into hiding for a time, though, and these little ones waited and waited and waited. Then one day, the fabric reappeared, and the momma went to work transforming it into the perfect sleepwear for two tiny Jedis-in-training.Clothed in their new Pajama Party PJs, with their lightsabers close at hand, the Younglings fell fast asleep, and dreamed of days ahead when they would be called to action in defending their living room, backyard and perhaps someday, the whole galaxy, from evil.


And with that final task complete, Operation Pajama Drawer drew to a close, and this busy momma breathed a sigh of relief. Her boys no longer had to dress in unsightly, ill-fitting jammies. Instead, each night, they chose from pajama drawers overflowing with handmade PJs, sewn with love.

 
Whew! This was such a busy sewing month! Thank you so much for sticking with me and sewing along! Remember that you still have until midnight eastern tonight (2/28) to add your pajama pictures to the Fishsticks Designs Flickr Group for a chance to win a great prize! I’ll be doing a little wrap-up and announcing the winner on Sunday evening.

Operation Pajama Drawer: Mixed & Matched Motorcycle Jammies

The month is over tomorrow! Are you finishing up PJs right now? You have until midnight eastern on 2/28 to add your photos to the Fishsticks Designs Flickr Group for a chance to win that $35 gift card to Simplifi Fabric!This last pair of Operation Pajama Drawer knit jammies for Charlie is a mixture of several of my patterns. I started out with the Patrick Curved Raglan and added the Runaround Pants, but because I love the curled jersey edges on the Runaround Pants, I replaced the traditional hem on the Patrick with the raw-edge hem from the Downtown V-Neck. (I really should have cut the shirt a little shorter to make up for the different hem . . . it ended up really long! More growing room, right?)Apparently, modeling pictures of pajamas with motorcycles require the wearing of goggles.A strange thing happened as we were finishing up these pictures. Jamie asked to put on his dinosaur jammies and join in! Maybe he’s getting over his why-do-you-have-to-take-my-picture-all-the-time phase? Or maybe he just wanted to share in the post-modeling bribery reward of a lollipop?I’ll be back with my last two pairs of pajamas tomorrow! I can’t wait to see all of your finished PJs!

Operation Pajama Drawer: Appliqued Big Kid Tanks

Oh, my! I had so much fun with these! I started with my free The Tank pattern, but since it only goes to size 5, I had to grade it up a bit to Jamie’s size 8. (Would anyone else like to have this pattern in Big Kid Sizes?) Once I had the pattern ready, I dug coordinating knit fabrics out of my stash, and then the fun part started — designing appliques to match the fabrics in the pants that I made a few weeks ago! I like the way that these came out so much, I’m a little sad that they’re pajamas!These raw-edge appliques are really quick and simple to do. You just press Wonder Under or Heat N Bond Lite onto the back of your fabric, draw or trace your design on the back, cut it out, peal off the backing and press your applique to the clothing (or pattern piece). You can use a zig-zag stitch around the edges, but for these, I just used a regular stitch about 1/8″ to 1/4″ inside the edge. This way, those edges will fray a bit in the wash for a fun, casual, modern look.

Here are all of the tops with their coordinating Pajama Party PJ pants:Since these all fit the same, I let Jamie choose which set he would model for me, and he was quick to yell, “FOOTBALL!!” Like I did for Charlie, I added a tiny bit of extra length to these pants so that Jamie has some growing room. (Why do kids always seem to grow up way faster than they grow out?!)Taking pictures of Jamie is so much easier than taking pictures of Charlie.He’s so much more mature, and silliness is really just not a problem.Nope, no silliness here at all.So, how’s your Operation Pajama Drawer sewing coming along? Friday is the last day to load your pictures to the Fishsticks Designs Flickr Group for a chance to win a $35 gift card to Simplifi Fabric!

Operation Pajama Drawer: Wee Tot PJs & More Prep Work

Eek! There’s only a week left in the month, and I have lots more pajama sewing to do! I did get a Wee Tot Collection PJ set finished for Charlie yesterday, though, and all of the rest of the pajamas are cut out and ready to sew.

There’s one more knit set of PJs — Runaround Pants and a Patrick Raglan.There’s a pile of pieces to make the five tops to go with Jamie’s jammie pants from last week.And, last but far from least, Charlie’s and Jamie’s long-awaited Star Wars Pajama Party PJs are finally progressing.
The Wee Tot Set that Charlie is wearing above is sewn from Lillestoff Under Construction organic cotton jersey and solid turquoise interlock. I used the size 5 laptee and pants, but I added a bit of length to the shirt and doubled the width of the legbands so that I could fold them up for a little extra growing room!

New pajamas on — check! Camera in mom’s hand — check! Lollipop bribery ready and waiting — check! Commence silliness!

Operation Pajama Drawer: Pajama Party PJ Pants in a Jiffy

When you’re trying to fill up a pajama drawer quickly, sometimes you just need a quick, easy and straightforward pair of PJ pants! (I’ll be honest and say that I almost always sew our woven pajama pants using this method.) To get started, you just need to print the pants from the Pajama Party PJs pattern, then assemble and cut out the pattern pieces, except for the pocket. We’ll be skipping the side seam pocket on these to make them up fast.Now grab a ruler and a pencil. Because the seam allowance is 1/2″, you’re going to be overlapping your two pattern pieces 1″ total. Use your ruler and pencil to draw a straight line 1″ from the straight side of either pattern piece.Line the straight side of your second pattern piece up with the line that you just drew and tape the pieces together. (You may have a tiny little piece that pokes out the top, just trim that away so that you have a nice even angle.) Now you have a one-piece pants pattern.Use this one-piece pattern to cut the pieces from your fabric, being sure to cut one, then one reversed (so that you have a left and a right leg).Fold each piece over to match up their inseams and just follow the pattern instructions from there!Here are a few other little tips for sewing pajama pants quickly. First, if you have multiples to sew, cut them all out at the same time. I’ve found that assembly line sewing is way faster than doing one piece at a time. My only little caveat here is, “Don’t cut out multiples if you’re using a pattern that you’ve never sewn before!” Please, always cut and sew and test the finished sizing once before cutting out a pile of anything. Lastly, just use white thread. Especially if you’re sewing more than one pair of pants, changing thread colors will slow you way down! If you’re picky, then choose fabrics that will work nicely with white. Once your elastic is in the waist and the waistband gathers up, though, it’s not likely that you’re even going to notice the color of the thread.As a total random aside, I named this blog post because my granny used to always say that she was going to do something “in a jiffy”. She just meant that it was going to get done quickly. I started wondering though what that means exactly, and apparently it is an actual measurement with different meanings in computing, astrophysics and quantum physics. In computing, a jiffy is the duration of one tick of the system timer interrupt. Typically, this time is 0.01 seconds. (Source.) Sewing pajama pants this way is fast, but not that fast!

Operation Pajama Drawer: Pajama Pants A-Plenty

How’s your Operation Pajama Drawer sewing coming along? Since this past weekend was a three-day one for us, I thought I’d go ahead and get Jamie’s pile of pajama pants all done! We ended up doing so many projects around the house, though, I barely had time to squeeze in an hour of sewing time a day. It’s a good thing that these sew up quickly. (Tomorrow, I’m going to share a quick little tutorial for how I make PJ Pants in a Jiffy using a slightly modified version of the Pajama Party PJ Pants pattern.)

The photo below is my big pile of PJ pants pieces on Friday evening. The photo above is what the pants looked like when I went to bed last night — just waiting patiently for their elastic and cuffs.I was able to wrap them up in no time this morning, and now Jamie has five new pairs of jammie pants. (Why, yes. Yes, I did notice that the mustaches are upside down, but not until I was pulling the elastic through its channel. At least I was consistent and cut all of the mustaches upside down in the same manner.) No modeling shots of these because Jamie announced as I was wrapping them up that he’d really like to have shirts to go with them . . . hmmmm . . . I can do that. Who needs to sleep when there’s sewing to be done.

Operation Pajama Drawer: Firefighter Lazy Days

I should subtitle this post, “Four-year-olds do not stand still.”  Or rather, “Three-year-olds do not stand still on the eve of their fourth birthdays because they’re overflowing with excitement.” This little guy cracks me up, and I can’t believe he’s four years old already! His new size 5T Lazy Days Lounge Set is sewn with organic cotton Lillestoff stretch jersey from Simplifi Fabrics and organic cotton interlock trim from Organic Cotton Plus.  I did add about 1/2″ in length to the top and the pants since Charlie is really tall, and I’m hoping these will fit for a while.

I’m going to keep this post short and let these silly pictures do the talking! (I have birthday baking and shopping to do! Charlie has requested a brownie cake with chocolate frosting and “red guys”. The cake I can handle. As for the red guys, I’m hoping Target has some good choices!)Oh, wait! One more thing . . . it’s noon now, and he’s refusing to take off his new jammies. I think that means he likes them!

Operation Pajama Drawer: Getting Started on Lazy Days for Charlie

Operation Pajama Drawer is finally underway! Have you started cutting anything out yet? Tomorrow is my Charlie’s 4th birthday, so my first PJ project this month is for him. I’m pairing up the Lillestoff firefighter print with solid gold cotton interlock for a Lazy Days Lounge Set.I cut out a size 5T for him last night after dinner. Now that he’s at the top end of the range of sizes in this pattern, I really want to extend it all the way up to size 12! My boys love this pattern, and I love sewing it. I cut the main parts of this pair out of one fabric, but one of my favorite things about this pattern is that you can use up your scraps for that top crossover part. You could even mix and match fabrics for the the two cross-over pieces and the bottom part of the shirt front . . . hmmmm . . . I might have to try that! As long as things go as planned, I’ll be sewing these up later today, so Charlie can sleep in them tonight!

Operation Pajama Drawer: Details for Sewing Along

Wheee! I’m so excited that so many of you are ready to join with me in sewing PJs for your little ones during the month of February! I will be so glad to have my two little guys’ pajama drawers packed full, and sewing will be so much more fun with you sewing along.  (If you missed the Operation Pajama Drawer intro post, you can find it right here: Operation Pajama Drawer.)How do you join in? Just grab any Fishsticks Designs pattern and sew a pair of pajamas this month. Once you’re done, be sure to post a finished picture in the Fishsticks Designs Flickr Group so that we can all admire your work, and so that you’ll be eligible to win a great prize! Everyone who shares a picture of a pair of Fishsticks Designs pajamas finished this month will be entered into a random drawing to be done on March 1st.

What’s the prize, you ask? The amazing folks at Simplifi Fabrics have offered a $35 gift certificate for the winner of the drawing! Simplifi Fabrics specializes in modern, eco-friendly fabrics and notions, and their selection is incredible! You’ll find all the information that you could possibly need about organic textiles on their site, and because they’re located in Canada near the US border, shipping to both the US and Canada is a breeze!But that’s not all! Just in case you need a Fishsticks Designs pajama pattern to sew, I’ve put all of the PDF pajama patterns in my main store on sale for $6 each through Sunday night SALE EXTENDED THROUGH MONDAY, 2/10 AT 8 P. M.: the Pajama Party PJs, the Lazy Days Lounge Set, the Wee Tot Collection and the Little One Layette. (Just add the pattern to your cart to see the sale price.) You don’t have to use a pajama pattern to enter, though. Feel free to use any of my patterns (the Charlie Tee & AJ Bottoms, maybe?) or tutorials (perhaps The Tank and the Comfy Pants), even my published and charity patterns are eligible (check out the Comfy Sleep Set and the Watered with Love Layette).

I’ll be sharing my progress along the way, and you can share yours, too! Come join us in the Fishsticks Designs Sewing Group where you can chat, ask questions, share pictures and maybe even make some new friends: Fishsticks Designs Sewing Group.

Handmade PJs & Christmas Wishes!

It’s 10 p.m. here on Christmas Eve, and my little ones are all asleep in their freshly made Pajama Party PJs. Presents are almost all wrapped. Two stuffed bears that are hidden in my bottom desk drawer are waiting for what will likely be very quickly embroidered noses, hopefully sometime before the clock strikes midnight. I can’t wait for tomorrow morning!

My prayer is that your home is filled with the joy of that very first Christmas, lots of laughter, love that fills your heart to overflowing and a bit of silliness, too!I’m taking a bit of blog vacation for the rest of the week, but I’ll be back to share more handmade Christmas projects soon. My family is visiting early in January, so I still have time to wrap up my sewing list!


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