Joining the pyjama party a little late

One of the changes the lockdown appears to have brought to our lives is a sudden plethora of online, live broadcast quizes. As someone who struggles to get a babysitter EVER, this has actually been a plus point. There have to be some, right?

On Saturday night, the lovely Amy and Marie hosted an online sewing pyjama pictionary party. They had made coordinated (utterly gorgeous) pyjama sets and wore them for nearly 2 hours of chatting and playing Pictionary, which was wonderful.

Sadly, I couldn’t join in live, but luckily Amy has now added the session to her YouTube channel, so you can go and watch it at your leisure. And a thoroughly lovely couple of hours it is!

On Sunday, there was a period of calm in our house, when all the jobs had been done, the girls had had a successful baking session and wanted some down time and no one needed me, so I snuck off down to my sewing room with the thought of making a start on one of the projects I’d batch cut the other weekend. I popped on YouTube, found Amy’s channel and started in on my first make from Tilly’s new book, Make It Simple.

Fittingly, it was the Juno pyjama set. I was in two minds as to whether to bother with this, given I’ve made myself very successful pyjamas using the Stellan t-shirt and the Monsal pants, but some bandwagons just look too damn comfy to ignore, so I traced off the short sleeved Tabitha t and the Juno bottoms, then followed the book’s instructions to make the shorty version.

You don’t need me to tell you, but I will: the book is lovely. Aesthetically pleasing, beautifully explained and photographed, the patterns are all designed to be pulled together in short periods of time (clearly motherhood has had its inevitable impact on Tilly’s available sewing time!)

Because this was pyjamas, I erred on the side of caution and cut a size 4 on top and a size 5 on the bottom. I also added my usual 1.5cm to the centre back seam to allow for my fuller bum! This is something I now do automatically to every trouser pattern.

I have to be honest and say I didn’t even glance at the instrutions for the tshirt. I’ve made so many now, and this doesn’t have any bells or whistles, so I just had a very enjoyable sew which didn’t require much in the way of concentration, which allowed me to enjoy Amy and Marie chatting away.

By question 8 of the quiz, I’d finished the tshirt and was feeling pretty good about things. No one was yelling for me, no one had come looking, so I carried right on sewing and moved onto the shorts.

These are also fabulously simple. The full length trousers have a cuffed leg, but the shorts are just a straight hem. The waistband is made by attaching elastic around the top of the shorts (the book tells you how to calculate the required length) and then folding that over to the inside, which is very straightforward. If I’m honest, I probably prefer the look of the Monsal’s waistband, which is a separate piece usually made up in ribbing, but this is definitely speedier.

And as the quiz finished (I scored a respectable 27 out of 30), I was literally about a dozen stitches away from finishing the final hem! Which means they took 1 hour 55 from start to finish.

For some reason, I then decided that the incredibly subtle fabric I’d chosen (from Flamingo Fabrics) just needed something more. I turned once again to my Cricut and pulled together a quick slogan in Design Space. My box of Happy Fabric iron on provided suitable scraps of hot pink flocked iron on and a deep green “normal” iron on.

I wanted to avoid layering the vinyl as much as possible (and I’m incredibly miserly with my vinyl!), so used the slice functionality to ensure that only the shadows themselves would be cut from the dark green vinyl, rather than cutting the entire slogan twice and then attaching the pink vinyl to another layer of vinyl.

I find adding vinyl to my makes incredibly satisfying: there’s a definite risk of my putting vinyl on just about everything, given half a chance! But I guess that justifies the machine?

So there you have it: a super speedy, comfy pair of shorty pyjamas whipped up in an afternoon which have done wonders for my mental health today! I’m now eyeing up the Safiya dungarees and hoping they will also prove to be just as speedy and satisfying (although there’s a risk that, without the Pictionary quiz to keep me company, they might not measure up!)