Fun with Fleece Session 6: Bonus Project: Fastest Ever Pajama Pants
National Sewing Circle EditorsDescription
For today's bonus project, I'm gonna show you how to make the fastest ever PJ pants. We're going to use Simplicity pattern 9250. As you can see, it's been used a few times, it's an oldie but a goodie that I've had for a while, and I really like it because the pajamas, especially the tops, are really loose, so you can be really comfortable at night in them. But today we're only gonna make the bottoms. This particular pattern, the reason it's the fastest PJs ever is it's a one-piece construction.
It's one pattern piece is all you have to cut out. You don't have a side seam, so now you are sewing two less long seams, and a nice thing about this is at the top where you put your casing, without having the side seams, you don't get as much bulk, so you won't feel that when you're sleeping at night and rolling over. It's just a sweet little pattern. If you wanna use one of your favorite patterns and it's a two-piece one, let me give you a little tip that you can do to turn it into a one-piece pajama bottom. As long as the sides are straight, this is a two-piece.
As long as the sides are relatively straight, you can take and overlap your pattern, and you're gonna overlap it since it's a 5/8-inch seam. Just like with the overlap seams, overlap your pattern by an inch and a quarter, pin it, or use pattern tape on it, and now you can go ahead and cut it as one piece. It's a good little trick, and do that with vests, with jackets, anywhere that you wanna eliminate a side seam or a back seam or even a shoulder seam with your fleece patterns, that's a good little tip for doing it. You can convert into a one-piece pattern. Now when I cut it out, I had to use the wider layout on the 54-inch fabric, so I remember I had to cut the fabric and rotate it so that my nap was going the same way.
I've gone ahead and already pre-cut this and pre-pinned it, I'm ready to go, but I wanna show you a couple little things. I went ahead and marked my front and back with my blue chalk marker, that was this chock pencil that I have, and as you can see, it doesn't come out right away. When you rub it, it will come out, and eventually it will wash out, but being on the inside of the garment, you really don't have to worry about it. But I marked the front and back. I marked the center where the side seam would've been, and all I did to do that was just put the edges together and fold it in half, and where it comes in the middle, that's where your center side seam would be going down your pants leg.
I also did the same thing at the bottom for the hem. I marked the center of the hem so that when we turn this up, everything will be evenly distributed. And as you can see on this, I went ahead and cut my notches to the outside, and I've used my thicker pins to go ahead and pin. When you're sewing with fleece, you definitely want to pin. That's literally a foot stomper.
Pin, pin, and pin. I want you to pin at both ends, in the middle, or evenly distributed down the length of your garment. In this case, I used I think six pins, and the extra went where the notches are and then where the indent is for the hem, the hem kinda jogs in and out here, and I wanna make sure that that doesn't get distorted while I'm sewing. So, I've got everything ready to go, so give me just a minute to get my machine set up, and we'll be back and get started on our project. All right, so we've got the machine out.
I've set it up for a 3.0 stitch, I've got my polyester thread in. I'm going to engage my integrated dual feed, that's my lever in the back, and that, as you remember, is to make sure my layers sew through accurately, and I always like to do a test seam before I get going, so I save little scraps of my fleece or whatever fabric I'm working on, it doesn't matter what kind of fabric it is, I always do a test. I wanna make sure my stitch is right where I want it before we get started. So I've got just a little bit of the fleece here. I've done a quick 5/8-inch seam, I'm checking out my tension and my stitches.
They look good. It looked like the machine handled the fleece just fine. So, now I know that I'm good to go, and I can see that a 3.0 stitch is gonna hold that nicely, so, let's get ready to sew. In the earlier portion of the segment, I was showing you where I put markings. I forgot to tell you that I will also, especially on solid fabric, I put a safety pin to the wrong side, because sometimes marks will rub off, but the safety pin isn't going anywhere, so just pin it to the wrong side, out of the way of where a seam line would be, and you'll always know which is the right and wrong side of your fabric.
All right, so we're ready to start sewing. We're sewing the inside leg of this seam. I wanna be at a 5/8-inch seam. I like to sew with needle down. The reason that I like needle down is because whenever I stop, the needle will always stop in the down position.
So if I have to move away from the machine, if I get a phone call or something and somebody walks in, my fabric isn't going to move, or when I get ready to pivot, the needle is always down, so I get nice, sharp pivots. So that's just something I like to do. So here we go. I make sure I don't sew over my pins. And that's because I don't want to break a needle or ruin my machine.
As you sew, you notice I'm just letting the fabric go on its own. We're guiding it, we aren't pulling it. And the integrated dual feed or your walking foot will help immensely in getting that fabric through the machine. Now, if you have some thick fabric, or you're having difficulty with getting it through, you might wanna use a stiletto. This is a stiletto, comes in a little tube.
You undo the tube, you can actually wear this around your neck if you wish. You could use this to guide fabric under the needle. It goes in very nicely. It also will help keep the fabric flat before it gets to the needle. So this is a tool that I like to use.
It's really good when we get to where we cross seams, and I'll show you that in a little bit. So let's just finish this seam. Again, keep your edges even. And here's where I'm at about pivoting. I'm just having to turn slightly for the rest of the seam, because that's where the hem is, and having needle down just made that slick as could be.
All right, let me get this out of the way, and I'm gonna show you some pressing tips. Now I need to press this. A lot of times your fleece will just literally lay open for you, which is nice, and so you won't have to use your iron. A lot of people like to use a little wooden iron, as they're called in the quilting world, and open the seams up until they get to the iron and give it a full press. I don't like it as well with the fleece, just because the fleece is so stretchy and I like to handle it more gently.
But if you are gonna use one, make sure you put your hands on either side and hold that seam firmly, and then do your little wooden iron. What I really like to do is give a little bit of steam. Remember you don't wanna iron directly on fleece. It will melt, it will get all over your iron, and where it melts will be very harsh and stiff on your fabric, and you don't want that, so, just hold it above and give it a little bit of a press with your steam, and then do it with your hand. But the best option I've found is to go ahead and use the pressing cloth, and we talked about this back earlier in the video.
So all you have to do is just open your cloth. You can use cheesecloth, you can use old handkerchiefs. I prefer a white one so you don't dare have any dye transfer, but this is a nice long one, which is great for long seams. Just lay it over the seam, and then you press directly on top of the pressing cloth. You can put this down, give it your shot of steam, and it's not going to hurt.
I always prefer to press just because I find I get a more professional-looking garment, and you can see where that is indeed laying down just a little bit nicer than this area that we didn't press. So get yourself a press cloth. Doesn't cost that much, it'll last a long time. Even clean white cotton fabric, 100% cotton will work great. So let me go ahead, I'm gonna finish pressing this, and then we'll be back, and I'll show you how to put the rest of the pants together.
The inset seam is complete, and I've already done the other leg previously, so now we're going to put the two together, and this is a little tricky here. You are going to have the other leg I have right side out. This leg that we just sewed is wrong side out. You're going to put the right side out leg inside the wrong side out leg, so that both right sides are together, right? Now you're going to match your center seam at the crotch and pin it.
I like to pin on both sides of the seam so that my seam will lay flatter and not flop up when I get ready to put it through the machine. And then you just work this pant leg in and around the crotch. Match up your double notches. I'd give it a pin right there in the middle of the crotch between the center seam at the bottom and the notch. And then of course, you're going to pin at the very top.
And then repeat that on the front side of the pants leg. And now we're ready to sew. Again, we're still using that 3.O stitch and a 5/8-inch seam. Now, on a crotch, you have a curve, so I find that when I'm sewing a curve, it helps to slow down just a little bit to make sure I'm getting an accurate seam on the curve. All right.
I like the stiletto because when I take the pin out, I don't have anything really holding that, and the stiletto can do that for me. And help guide that bulk under the machine, so it's wonderful for when you come to a cross seam like that. Again, as much as possible, be gentle with your fabric. Try not to distort it or stretch it. Now because we have a curve where the curve of the seam is for the crotch, pretty much from notch to notch, I wanna come in, and I'm going to clip it, and I'm going to clip just short of the seam line.
That's where these really nice little sharp scissors with sharp points are wonderful. You wanna come in, maybe no more than 1/8 of an inch away, between 1/8 and 1/4, and about every inch or so, you're just gonna do a slight clip in here that takes the pressure off the seam and will give ease to your fabric in there. You'll be less apt to pop a seam or have problems with seams if you do this. I like to come in in between the notches, especially since we're working with fleece here, I wanna trim this back to about 1/4 of an inch. You'll still have slight clip in there, not much.
Just gonna trim it away to get rid of that excess bulk. Again, if you have a serger, doing your crotch seam with that serger is a wonderful option. And if the bulk is a little too thick for you to cut when you get to the seam, just cut one layer of the seam allowance at a time. After you've clipped and trimmed your crotch, you're going to want to press again. You're only going to be able to press open the seam from the notch to the top of the pants.
So again, I'm going to open it up, I'm gonna bring in my press cloth, and I'm gonna give it a shot of steam. There we go. And then we wanna do the same on the other seam. All right, so now our pants legs are together. It's starting to look like pajamas.
So I'm gonna turn this right side out. You can see how that looks. Now we're going to work on our casing, and I wanna trim out my thread here just a little bit. All right, for your casing, you don't have to, with typical cotton fabrics, we'd be turning it under 1/4 of an inch and then turning it down. We don't have to do that with fleece.
What we're going to do, bring this around so you can see better, is we're going to use our hem guide, this is a nice little tool that Dritz has, it's marked and you have a sliding indicator here, and I wanna turn my casing under an inch and a quarter, so I just go ahead and slide that up to an inch and a quarter. Going to come here, and I put the guide at the top edge there, and the top of the ruler at the bottom edge of my casing, and that's how I can measure. Now I wanna make sure, I need to look for my marks. This is the front. So the front, I definitely wanna go ahead and turn down.
The reason I'm looking is because at the back edge of your pants is where you're going to be inserting the elastic. And you know what? I actually forgot an important trick that I wanna show you. Before I did these pants, I wanted to test and see what would be the best way to do the casing. This doing the casing with just the regular seam with a quarter inch.
I thought, well, am I really happy with how my seams are laying down, or do I want to top stitch those? So I tried top stitching a sample, and then I turned my casing down, and this is where my elastic's going. This ended up being much thicker after I sewed it, and I really don't like that look as well, so I'm just gonna go with the simple route and not top stitch the seam down. The other consideration you have is when you turn that down, those seams are still open in there, they are not anchored, so when you try and thread your elastic through the casing, a lot of times you are going to catch your safety pin on those inside seams. You are going to put a large safety pin, and pin it, or there are elastic threaders you can buy, this method works very well, but a lot of times when you're putting it through, it's going to run in and catch here on that seam allowance on either the top one or the bottom one where it's folded, instead of going right through the center like this, like it should.
So, I'm gonna show you a little trick to eliminate that before we pin our casing, and I apologize for not thinking of this sooner Steam-A-Seam is a wonderful invention. It comes on a roll, and it's a double, Steam-A-Seam 2 is a double-sided tape. So you just pull it out here, and I'm just gonna cut a couple little pieces, probably about, I'm coming down an inch and a quarter, so doubled would be 2 1/2, and you can just eyeball it. And what you're going to do is it's sticky on one side, so I put the sticky onto the seam itself, and you don't want to, you wanna make sure it's fully covered by the seam and that you aren't going to get it on the iron, so if a little falls over, make sure you trim it off. And then I need another piece for the other side.
Put that right on the seam. It'll stick right next to the edge, is what I'm after. And then I'm gonna lay it back. Now, go ahead and lightly steam this. I think the instructions are for five seconds.
So go ahead and put your press cloth, press cloth isn't cooperating, put the press cloth over it and give it a steam. What this does is it anchors it down. It adheres the seam to the fabric. And you can see now it's not coming up. So I want to do that on both sides, the front and back seam.
If you have a four-piece pattern, you would have four seams, so you would need to then do it on your side seams. You could baste it. If you baste it, though, I've found that the stitches sunk in so much I was not able to easily remove them, and you don't wanna see those stitches when your garment is finished. So I found that Steam-A-Seam 2 was absolutely the right answer. See, they're both adhered down.
This is my back side. I can actually start wherever you wish. We're gonna come down the inch and a quarter. We just need to leave a little bit open, just enough to get that into the casing, so maybe two inches on either side should be more than enough. And we're going to pin all the way around.
You want to make sure as you pin that you are coming down and matching where those centers and where the seams are. And I like to pin frequently, because you don't want to be stretching or pulling this. Double check occasionally, sometimes the guide gets a little loose, and it may move from the spot where you wanted it. And you wanna make sure that you're working accurately. Typically in a casing for pants, you use a one-inch elastic.
I'm going to be using a 3/4-inch. It just goes through the fleece a little bit easier. You've got an inch and a quarter turnover. You're gonna be doing a 1/4-inch seam, that would give an inch for the 3/4-inch elastic to go through. It gives a little bit more room for it to ease through rather than if I had an inch.
Another one of those little tricks of the trade. Pajamas are pretty forgiving. If you're off just a little bit, it's not gonna be the end of the world. I try to be very accurate with my sewing, but on something like this, as long as you're in the ballpark, you'll be good. If you're off by 1/8 of an inch, it's not the end of the world.
Now, you're going to take your press cloth again, and I like to press my casing before I sew it. Get some steam going. Steam is wonderful, it gives you a nice crisp line, and if there's any extra fabric there, it does tend to take out the slack and help it lay flat. Makes it a lot easier for you when you're sewing. A lotta people try and avoid it.
When I was younger, in home economics classes, boy, I just wanted to put pedal to the metal and get done fast, and I had a teacher that said, "Take your time and go over and press every seam, especially before you cross it with another seam, and your garments are going to look much more professional. They won't look homemade, they're going to look professional or even handmade. And there's a big difference between handmade and homemade." And it took a while for me to appreciate that, but now I am a firm believer and I find it makes all the difference in the world in the final results, and it makes it easier, I have less frustration when something is pressed. It's flat and easy to work with. And that's where one of these little pressing boards is nice because you can take it over by your sewing machine and you don't have to get up and go to the ironing board all the time.
The casing's probably the most time-taking part of this, making it and putting the elastic through, but once you've got that, you're on the home stretch. All right, so I wanna start at the back seam where we left that four-inch opening. You're going to come in here, and remember, we wanna do approximately a 1/4-inch seam. If you have a 1/4-inch foot, you can put that on. I'm just gonna do it with the regular one, because I like the bigger bite of this particular presser foot.
I'm going to start where my first pin was. So take that pin out. You're going to want to either stitch a few stitches forward and then go in reverse and come forward, or if you have automatic tie-on, tie-off, like I do on this Pfaff, you want to engage that, and what that does is it actually sews forward and backward a couple of stitches, and then it automatically goes forward for you. See that? So after it's tied on and tied off, it just goes forward for you.
Again, you're gonna wanna remove your pins as you sew. Gets a little bulky around your machine, so I like to keep moving that fabric down so I can see what I'm doing. And you can see in this case, we're needle-down. It's nice, because my fabric is not slipping, it's staying where I put it. Coming up to a seam.
If you need to, you can use your stiletto to help keep it under the foot. The integrated dual feed is getting it over the hump very, very nicely for me without any problems. And I use the guides on my foot to indicate where that 1/4 inch is. I'm just sewing to the inside of the opening there, and it's doing a very, very nice job. And I'm coming up on my last pin.
Eyeball where it was, hit tie-on, tie-off. And I have the automatic cutting scissors on this machine, I'm getting spoiled. It cuts the threads. You're still gonna have a little bit of threads at the backside of your fabric, so I like to come through and trim those off to make sure my work is staying neat. And now we're done with the bulk of the casing.
For pajamas, and any type of pants top, I like to use non-roll polyester elastic. It stretches very well, and these lines that you see on the elastic here are part of what keep it from rolling. It gives a little friction inside the casing and prevents it from rolling as much. But I'm gonna show you another tip in a minute for making sure it really doesn't roll. All right, when you put your safety pin on, don't just pin it at the end like this.
There have been times where I've literally had it come off or out, and it's usually when I'm in the middle of the casing, and you have to pull it all out and start over again. Thread your pin through, and leave some pin out at the end to push through. The second pin is here for a reason, and I'll show you that in a second. I wanna get this started, so you just lift this back, and you're going to slip your pin in, and you just kind of scrunch it through the casing. And you gotta be kinda careful, of course, because this, we don't wanna distort it, but it is not as easy to pull through as it is if it was cotton.
You're going to take the other end. For your elastic, you measure your waist, and two inches. The two inches is for overlap for sewing the elastic off at the end. I like to take this, make sure which way my elastic is coming through, and at the seam, make sure it's nice and straight there, that it didn't get twisted, go ahead and safety pin this down, because your elastic is shorter than the length of the casing, and it's just gonna pull through if you aren't careful, and I've found that's just a good little fail-safe. So then you can come back, and continue to thread your elastic through your casing, and I'll be right back after I'm done with this.
So we've got the elastic all through the casing, you can see where it's nicely gathered up, and as you come out of the end where the opening is, you are going to want to make sure that you overlap your elastic by at least an inch and put a pin through. Before you do this, make sure you try the pants on either yourself or whoever the recipient is, and make sure the elastic truly is where you want it and that it's comfortable. Then go ahead and pin this, and now it's time to sew. Make sure, again, you don't sew over your pin, but you're going to, this is gonna be a little tough to see, I'm gonna do the best I can because the quarters are a little tight, you're going to come down, and I have pinned parallel to the edge of the elastic. You're going to come down, take your pin out, and sew.
Do not pull the elastic. You just wanna let it lie flat. And sometimes it wants to come loose. Go ahead and stitch down to the edge. You're going to pivot.
We're gonna make a square here. You can see where that elastic slipped a little bit on me. That just plain happens. Keep pivoting to get that full square. Pivot again for the final corner of the square, the final leg.
And when you get to the top, I do a couple of back stitches. And then I like to do a giant X. So, if you come off, that's all right, just start right there, do a little bit of a back, and then come down to that far corner there. Go up the short leg of the square. Make the X, and make sure you go back a little bit.
More is better in this case. It's a little tricky application, get in there as best you can. The whole idea is to make sure that you're securing that elastic so that it won't dare break on you later. And you're going to have, I know it's hard to see with the yellow thread, but you're gonna have something that looks like a square with an X in it. And that should hold it nice and secure for you.
You can see that I'm pulling on it, and it's not breaking, it's not going anywhere. Give it a good tug test, 'cause once it's in your kid's pajamas, you know how rough they can be on them. If you have a little bit of elastic that has slipped like that, I would go ahead and trim it off. It's not gonna hurt. The reason I'm trimming it is because that casing is pretty tight, and you're gonna have a hard time getting it through if you don't take that little extra off.
So now you wanna give a good stretch on your pants, because you wanna pull that elastic through. All right? And if you can center that X right there, that's a good thing. If it won't quite center, that's all right. And this was why I really wanted to make sure that you had the elastic going the same way, 'cause you don't wanna twist in there.
So I'm going to just pin where I need to come back and stitch. And I'm just eyeballing at this point in time what my inch and a quarter is. Feel free to measure it if you want. We're gonna come back, and we're going to sew this. Again, 1/4 of an inch.
You're gonna have some bulk here. Try not to sew through the elastic at this point in time. Trim your threads. Now what I like to do, because it's always hard to tell the front from the back, is right here where I put in my elastic, I like to come in and do a another square with an X. Just turn it, go right along the casing line, pivot, make a square.
Pivot back. And you can just leave it there, or if you wish, you can do the X. Now at this particular spot, because you're sewing the elastic down, you won't have any gathers there, or any extra stretch, but that's all right, it's just a little small, one-inch square. Trim your threads. And now as you can see, there's a little square there in the back that takes the place of the tags, so now you know, tags in the back, look for the square in the back.
The other option, if you don't wanna do the square like that, put a little ribbon loop right here in the back. Just sew your ribbon underneath the casing as you're coming down. Just something to let the kids know what's the back versus the front. Now I told you I was gonna give you another little trick for keeping elastic from rolling. So what I want you to do is go ahead, make sure your gathers are the way you want them.
This one doesn't have, surprisingly, doesn't have too many gathers, but you still wanna adjust them neatly around your pants, and this is the best way to do it. And once you're happy with how they are, I usually just try and pull it out fully and then bring it back, and you can see that's fairly even. At that point in time, find your sides, or your inset seam, this would be the seam in the front, and you are going to stitch in the ditch. You are literally going to line up your needle with that seam line. Let me show you here.
You're gonna be stitching right here in that center seam. Right, right on the seam line itself. And that's gonna go through, and it's gonna hold your elastic down and keep it from rolling. Go ahead and tie-on, tie-off. And then trim your threads.
On the outside, you can barely see those stitches, you have to really look for them, but now your elastic won't roll, and it won't shift inside the casing. The elastic will always be evenly gathered, which is nice. If you have four seams, you know, if you have side seams on your pants, do it at the side seams also. If you want to, and it bothers you, you can come and just stitch through it where there isn't a seam, just do it at the center front and center back. I don't think you really need it, I think this will be sufficient.
So, now we're almost done. The last thing to do is the hem. For this one, I want to, if you have a free arm machine, take your arm off so that you are just having the free arm. This is what this is designed for, so you can do pants hems, cuffs, sleeves. It just makes life a lot simpler.
We're going to use our handy dandy little hemmer guide. Start at your side seam, and this time you're gonna come up one inch. Or whatever your pattern says, mine's one inch. Again, I like to pin on both sides of the seam there. I like to come over and do the opposite side, this would normally be a side seam, which would be opposite that inset seam, and pin that next.
The reason I like to do that is to make sure that we're evenly distributing the fabric. Come on and do about third of the way through on between those two seams. Check your measurements. Put a pin. And then we're gonna finish pinning over here.
And let me give this a press, and then we'll come back and sew it. My hem is pinned, it's pressed, and now I'm going to slip it onto the free arm. As you can see, it goes all around the free arm, and it makes it very easy to turn. And as you can see, I have the wrong side facing up. I turned the pants leg inside out, and this will be the easiest way for you to do this.
If you were doing it on the flatbed, you would have to have the right sides out so you could sew to the inside, but this way you do it just the opposite and your wrong side is up. And I wanna make sure my needle's down. You can either look for an edge guide, one of your guides here, and if you do that all the way around, you'll be assured of a perfect hem rather than doing the guide from the edge, but you wanna make sure that you are catching all of the hem. And you're probably about, again, 1/4 of an inch in, just to have enough fabric to catch and not come out. Don't stretch it, just guide it and be very gentle with it.
You don't wanna distort the hem down here by pulling it. The free arm makes this so much easier. You aren't fighting the fabric. Trim the threads, give it a little press after you've finished, turn it right side out, and there you have the fastest pajamas ever. These should literally take you anywhere from a half an hour to an hour to complete.
They are very fast. They go a lot faster when you aren't talking. So I challenge you, you can get them a half hour to an hour. They're a fun little project, and I guarantee you once you make one for one member of your family, everybody's gonna want some, so get in there and get sewing, and have lots of fun with fleece.
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