Girls’ Nightgowns and Boys’ PJ Pants

I am not making Christmas pjs for my children this year. I made them pjs and wool shirts a few months ago when they really needed them. But a friend needed help sewing her kids Christmas pjs, and since I had an opening in my Christmas-pj-schedule I said I would help. Okay, who am I kidding, I kind of took over. We didn’t have time to finish them when we last visited her house, so I brought it all home with me. She has two daughters and three sons. The girls each got a nightgown (see picture) and the boys each got pj pants (again, see picture).

I want to show you what my new binder foot did extremely easily and well. The picture shows the neckline of a nightgown bound with 1/4″ (finished) binding. To apply this, I sewed one shoulder seam closed, leaving the other open. I then applied the binding along the neckline from one end to the other, using the binder foot to enclose the neckline edge in the fold of the binding. The binding was a 1″ strip of fabric that I pressed in on both edges and then pressed in half.  I should have stay-stitched at the neckline’s edge before applying the binding, so it wouldn’t gape open at all, but I didn’t and the gaping is really not bad.

Now the ruffle (at the ends of the sleeves and the bottom hem) was extremely easy to add using my serger gathering attachment. (I don’t know how I ever lived without a serger. It is the only reason I am at all productive.) I applied all the ruffles “flat” also, which is something I do often now. It takes a few moments before beginning a project to figure out how to adjust the steps, but after that, the whole project can be much easier. Here’s the procedure I followed to add the ruffles “flat” during the garment construction.

1) Sew/serge one shoulder closed.

2) Add neckline binding. (See above.)

3) Sew/serge other shoulder closed.

4) Sew/serge sleeves to the bodice.

5) Attach ruffle to the end of each sleeve,the bottom of the front bodice, and the bottom of the back bodice, using the serger gathering attachment. My differential was set at 2.25 and I allowed double the amount of fabric for the ruffle.

6) Sew/serge entire side seam, from end of sleeve, passing underarm point, to the bottom hem of garment. Repeat for other side seam.

7) Using serger, add a rolled hem to all ruffles. (This step can be done at any point after step #5. However, doing it at this point means you cross all serger thread tails and don’t have to knot them or catch them in the beginning and ending of seams, such as I discussed here.)

I didn’t discuss the construction of the boys’ pj pants construction, but will write about those on another day. In the meantime, you can refer to this post to see some general comments about how I construct pj bottoms.

Bonus: Receive huge kudos from me if you can figure out my big mistake. Look closely at top photo. It is kind of hard to see. Those are not the best photos.