how to make pyjama pants | Stitch and Boots

Once again I’d like to apologize for having put this sew-along on hold for such a long time. After my mother came home from her month long stay at the hospital I was helping her recover and had to start looking for a job. It’s been very hard to come back to sewing after such a long hiatus. Thank you for your patience!

Now that you’ve cut out your pattern pieces we come to the first of the pattern’s instructions. But they aren’t very detailed. You need to make two button holes for your drawstring to be threaded through.

Using a sharp pencil, poke through the pattern piece to mark the beginning and end of the button hole making sure you can see your pencil marks on the fabric. Once you’ve done this to one front leg piece you need to turn the pattern over and do the same to the other front leg piece. Use a ruler to make a line connecting your two markings and make it dark enough that you can see the pencil line on the wrong side of the fabric.

Next you need to cut out two 1″ squares of fusible interfacing and iron them onto the wrong side of the fabric centered over the buttonhole you’ve marked. This will reinforce the button holes.

Now make your buttonholes. My Pfaff machine has a really bad attitude about making buttonholes which makes it a frustrating experience. Hopefully your machine likes making them. New sewers – If you haven’t made them using your machine yet you may want to go to a sewing machine shop to get a demo or study your manual and practice a number of times on scrap fabric. I can’t actually tell you how to do them because all machines do buttonholes differently.

I share with you the best (crappy) buttonhole of the two I made. Honestly, sometimes my machine makes them beautifully and other times not a prayer in heaven will help my machine cooperate.

The next thing you want to do is serge all the raw edges of your fabric except for the waistline and the hem which will be turned under later. If you don’t have a serger you can skip this step. I told you in Part 1 that you can zig-zag the edges to keep them from fraying but after doing this on some edges to test it – I can’t recommend it. It’s totally fine to have raw edges unless the fabric you’re using is a very loose weave. At the end you can use pinking shears on exposed edges if you want to – but it isn’t necessary.

About sewing the pant legs together – I do it differently than they do in the instructions but I’ve given this some thought and for beginners (and even experienced people) their instructions may actually be better than the way I’ve been sewing pants together my whole life. So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m sharing photos with you of the way I put pants together because it’s worth knowing how to do it this way too. But I suggest following their instructions, especially if you’re new at this. I am going to put their instructions in italics from here on out.

If this is your first ever sewing project you may not already know that you need to always back-stitch a seam at the beginning and end to keep it from coming undone. To do this you sew forward for just a few stitches, put your machine in reverse and carefully stitch over those stitches. Then go forward again to the end of your seam and put your machine in reverse again. Sew just a few stitches backwards and then go forward to the end of the seam and clip your thread.

Stitch front to back at inner leg seams.

They do not instruct you to press your seams open. Which is stupid. Please press your seams open.

Doing it my way you also stitch the front to the back at the inner seam and then you also stitch the outer seam. And press them open.

With RIGHT sides together, pin center seam, matching inner leg seams and notches. Stitch.

You can reinforce your seam by stitching over it once again as their instructions suggest. I would only do this if you have a tendency to split your seams while wearing pants. They have you trim the seam allowance down and I suggest you do NOT do this.

My way: you want to turn one pant leg right side out and then slide it into the other pant leg matching up the crotch seam at the notches and the inner leg seam.