Pillowcase Pyjamas

Last Sunday afternoon, I wandered out for a walk into town. All on my own!

Being on my own (without young helpers to take things off the rails and play hide and seek in amongst the things hanging up), I popped into a charity shop for a casual browse. I like doing this - mainly in the hope something might catch my eye that could be harvested for fabric, or, even better, some bundles of lovely vintage linens to buy. This luck rarely comes my way. But, I spotted this pair of pillowcases.

With KCWC vaguely on my mental horizon, and, the eldest girl's gentle but persistent  requests for some new pyjamas, I thought "Bingo!". Nice soft, pretty fabric. These will make nice pyjamas, I thought. I held up the pillowcase to try and guess if they'd be long enough. And then I figured that, having three girls has its advantages in situations like this, as if the pillowcases turned out to be too small to make something for the biggest girl, then there were two others waiting in the wings. He, he.

Big scissors, a pair of her current pyjamas, and the overlocker at the ready, it took me just under an hour to make these from start to finish. Hurrah! And, they fit the biggest girl. Double hurrah!

I added some nice ribbon for extra prettiness. This has definitely gone down well with the biggest girl. As has the little loop so that she knows which is back and which is front. A small improvement on the last pair I made for her.

For the top, I pulled out the same pattern I had used last year - but made a couple of minor adjustments on last year's version. Starting with the bias binding, which I swapped for the same ribbon I'd used on the bottoms. Admittedly, this doesn't sit quite as nice and flat as the binding would, but it was quicker to make and looks nice enough.

I swapped the ties for elastic and a button, as I thought this would make the pyjamas easier for a child to get on and off independently. It has.

If I'd had more fabric, I would have made the sleeves a bit wider to make them a little loser - but this just wasn't possible.

And, after wearing them for a night, my resident sleeping beauty has judged them a success.

It was a lot of fun making something new out of something old.

There was no pressure to get it right - it was entirely guilt free fabric I had bought, and had not cost me much anyway. And it was extremely satisfying to realise the challenge of squeezing a pair of pyjamas out of a couple of old pillowcases can be done. Not that I had woken up that morning with that challenge in mind - but it is sometimes nice just to follow the inspiration from the thing in front of you when it hits. This is the kind of creativity that I love, and that makes me feel happy.

Next on the making pile is another old into new project. I'll let you try and guess what my initial fabric started out as (the clue is in the round thing), and, what I plan to turn it into (here's a clue).

On a different note, big great big thank you to the people who have already jumped on board with The Wonky Wilma Challenge. Wow. Exciting to see others joining in with this charity project. I can't wait to see some finished versions! Please keep spreading the elephant fun about and share the links. If you haven't got your pattern yet, then a couple of clicks here, and it's all yours. Go on...