summer pajamas and nighties

With the warmer weather finally here, I decided it was time to get myself in gear and make the girls some summer pajamas and nighties. I bought some plain white tank tops at Wal-Mart for $3 each along with several yards of a classic cotton print, and in no time I had them sewn up. For the nighties, I used the same basic idea from my tutorial for the long sleeved tees into nighties, cutting the tank top off at the bottom, attaching the gathered skirt to it, and then adding a ruffle to the bottom edge with the same fabric as the skirt. These work up so fast, I love it.

For the pajama pants I just used one of the simple pants patterns I always keep on hand, except I cut a few inches off the bottom edge to make them a cropped pant, and hemmed the bottom edges. Then I cut two strips of matching fabric that were about 2 inches wide and about twice the circumference of the bottom edge of the pants, serged both of the edges to finish them and stop any fraying, and sewed the short edges together, right sides together, to make a continuous circle. Then, using my longest stitch length I ran a gathering stitch directly down the middle of each one on the right side of the fabric, pulled the bobbin thread from the wrong side of the fabric to gently gather them, and evenly pinned them to the pants, wrong side of the fabric on the ruffle against the right side of the fabric on the pants, matching the bottom edges of the ruffle to the hem edge. Then, I sewed down the middle of the ruffles, using the gathering stitch as a general guide, and stitched them in place using a regular stitch length.

Haven loves them and they make the perfect summer pajama pant, as they provide very light and airy coverage for the warmer nights. In the end I was able to make 3 nighties and 1 pair of pants, with 3 more nighties and 3 more pairs of pants left to sew. Now if I can just stop obsessing about sewing cloth diapers long enough to finish them...