I never see the point of throwing away clothes. Giving them away- that’s different; if you have discarded clothes, clean and whole, which can be used by someone else, than it doesn’t make sense to cut it into pieces. If however, there is just a small hole, a stain somewhere or just a worn out fabric, then there is still so much you can do with it!
1. Take your kid’s jersey pants, fold them in two like on the picture and put them on the sleeve of daddy’s tee (from now on called “DT” !!) The end of the DT sleeve becomes the leg opening of the pajama pants (“PP”) and the bicep area becomes the crotch of the PP.
Draw around the folded crotch with a pen, on the sleeve of DT. Cut out. You should now have two pieces like this:
3. Stitch together with a thin zig zag (normal zig zag, but decrease the width a little). You can check out my tutorial on how to sew in jersey to find out more.
4. The last step of the pants, is to fold down the top (the waist) to make a channel for the elastic band. Pin down the fold to around 3-4 cm and stitch with zig zag a presser foot width from the end. Leave an opening to insert the elastic band!
5. Attach the elastic band to the safety pin and insert it into the channel. Grab both ends and zig zag them together on the machine, securing it by sewing back and forth a couple of times. You can also tie them together, but it’s not so nice to sleep on a knot, I think … Anyway, pants are done! Let’s continue with the t-shirt.
1. The lay out of the Pajama tee (PT) will look like this on DT. The dark blue center part of DT will be the body of the PT and the side of DT will be the sleeves of the PT. Get it?
Mark out with a pen along the lines of the shoulders, the neck and the side seams of the PT.
2. For the armhole of the PT, lift carefully without moving anything else, and draw along the armhole seam of your kid’s t-shirt. Don’t cut yet!
3. Now, let’s move your kid’s t-shirt and place it like this on DT. Lift up the sleeve to draw out the sleeve head, following the seam of your kid’s t-shirt. Do the same on the other side, using the cut out sleeve as a pattern if you want. Go ahead and cut the rest.
6. Mark out a rectangular piece with the measurement of the neckline, width about 4 cm. Cut it out, you only need one piece.
10. Pin the sleeve head on to the armhole. There is some twisting and pulling here, but start by putting together the center top of the sleeve head with the just made shoulder seam, and then move on to the end of the armhole /sleeve crown. Pin down the whole thing, the other side too and stitch it with zig zag. When you’re done it should look like below picture.
11. Side seams: Fold the sweater by the shoulder seam and pin together on the inside of the sleeve, making a curve in the armhole (match up the seams!) and continue down to the end hem of the PT. Same on the other side seam/ inside sleeve. Sew with zig zag.
13. Iron the neckband wrong side to wrong side, making sure that the edges match up.
raori 