Childrens Pajama Pants

I made these a couple weeks ago and JUST got around to posting this.... Yeah, I guess you can call me a slacker ;)
I just want to say this is one of my easier tutorials here. You will need fabric - the specific amount depends on your child's size and whether you are making pants or shorts (I made pants). Regardless, you will need enough for four "leg cut outs" (you can see what I mean below), a pair of pajama pants the same size or a size bigger to trace, and if you're doing this for a girl maybe a little piece of ribbon tied into a bow for the front of the waist band. Last, but definitely not least, elastic- enough to go around your child's waist.

To start, lay out your fabric and fold the pants you will be tracing in half, and trace them like this:

Picture From Simply Modern Mom

Apparently I didn't get as many pictures as I thought I did, please for give me. The picture above is from SimplyModernMom.com

Make sure to add a few inches to the top (we will be folding it over to create the casing for the elastic to go through later) about 2 ish inches should be fine *I used 3/4in elastic*. (I traced a regular pair of jeans and didn't add enough extra fabric to the top and ended up with a waist a bit lower than I like.... So just know this is the worst that can happen lol).
Now after you have traced and cut out your "quarter of the pants" four times (see the picture below) you can start sewing them together, going down the longest side of each. Make sure right sides are together, again see the pictures below...

Two of the 4 pieces - BTW I these are a size 5
I told you the waist was a bit short... Make
Sure you add those couple extra inches ;)

If you look closely you can see where I have sewn
down the right side (longest side) -now do this again
with the other two leg pieces

Instead of four quarters (four leg pieces) at this point you should have two pieces that look like the picture above.

Now you're ready to sew the shortest two seams - so open up each of the two leg pieces...
Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of this part either so I will substitute with this one from "My Cotton Creations"

Picture By My Cotton Creations

Imagine there is a seam down the middle of this (because that's what yours should look like), After you place your two pieces together like this you will be sewing the short curvy part ONLY. DO NOT sew down the legs yet and DO NOT sew the top.

Now fold this together so that both of those curvy pieces you have just sewn are touching...

You will see on yours that the insides of the legs aren't sewn together yet (this photo of mine they are - didn't get a picture of the before but you get the hint...) You will want to sew them together now. I sewed up one and right down the other so I didn't have to stop and go up the other leg and hope everything matched up etc.

All that's left at this point is hemming up the bottom of the legs, I folded them up twice so that I didn't have another raw edge *exactly why you'll need those extra couple inches*, and creating a casing for the elastic at the top.

The top of the pants I folded over about 1/4 inch and over again about an inch. You'll sew just at the bottom of this ALMOST all the way around. Leave about an inch opening to get your elastic through.



I suggest using a safety pin at the end of the
elastic to help pull it through.

Once you have pulled your elastic through, sew the ends together - Thought I had a picture of this too but I guess not. Basically you will pull on both ends and over lap them about 1/4-1/2 inch and do a zig-zag stitch to hold them together. Now you can close up the hole that you used to pull the elastic through.

TADA! Now you have pajama pants :D I had this piece of blue ribbon laying around that just happened to match, tied it in a bow and hand sewed it on. Perfect finishing touch!

Have you made pajama pants yet? Any ideas or suggestions? What should I do next? Please share in the comments section below!

Moving and the Craziness That Follows...

I believe we have moved over a million times in the six and a half years Dustin and I have been together... Ok, that MAY be a LITTLE exaggerated..... Just a little though haha. So hopefully for the last time for a long while we started our new moving adventure last thursday. And what an adventure it has been too! So, if you've been wondering why there havent been many posts lately - here it is...

We had made the decision to move back in January but didn't really start looking around until february. Even after we really started looking we just couldnt seem to agree on anything, didnt exactly like much of anything we saw... Finally mid February we settled on an apartment in Oregon City, put a small down payment on it and put in our 30 day notice at our appartment. At this point you'd think we would be done looking, right? Wrong... I'm not sure what it was really, I guess just after really thinking it through we realized that wasn't exactly what we wanted. Not only have we wanted a yard for the girls literally forever but I realized, Serenity will be FIVE this year... That means she will be starting school this fall. Holy COW! And if I am going to be taking her to a school, I want to make sure it's a GOOD school. In the almost 5 years we've been in this area I have heard nothing BUT good things about the schools around here. I want Serenity to have the best possible school experience. I don't want to move her around a bunch, I don't want to send her to a school and just "hope" that it's a good school. I want to be confident about it. So, we decided to keep looking. It felt like we had been looking forever and everything kept falling through, we had already put a small down payment on the place in Oregon City and were starting to think that was going to have to be the one. After a lot of looking, a lot of places falling through and even more praying, I pulled up a place in listed just down the street that I had been missing, overlooking-whatever you want to call it, the whole time... Why havent I looked at this place?? It looks like it's big enough, has a small yard... So finally I open it up on the computer and it looks allright... We set up an appointment to come see it and the lady fell through but gave us the code to the lock box the key was in... (weird, we had never met her), we walked through and absolutely fell in love. It was the one we have been looking for all along.

*Seriously, to Dustin it's probably not such a big deal but for me it most definitely is a HUGE deal. I have ALWAYS wanted to live in a house with a tree out front that had pink flowers - When I was a kid my uncle had a house with a cherry tree out front and I LOVED it. This place even has a tree out front and guess what?! Little pink flowers are beginnning to blossom on it!*

I know, people don't decide on where to live based on wether or not there's a tree with pink flowers out front haha! It has a cute little back yard that isn't too small but isn't too big either, the perfect little tree out front, and everything we need on the inside... Where do we sign?! So we played phone tag with the lady that said she was leasing the place, finally turned in applicaations and were accepted - She asked when we wanted to move in and we told her that we really needed to move by the 10th at the latest... (this was MAYBE a week before the 10th...) So, she wasn't quite ready... I'm not sure we could have been more ready haha, we hadn't started moving and already wanted to be done with it! This lady gave us a date we could start moving in and by that date still didn't have the lease ready and everything else blah blah blah but told us we could move in anyway - Here's where Dustin started getting skeptical...( Is this a scam?! Why are we moving in before we have signed a lease?! Where is this lady?! )Eventually we did sign the lease, thank God, and everything started to settle down. It took forever to get moved in - this time without packing beforehand - I told you it's been an adventure :) - The first couple days of being here we had no heat (it's gas heating and Dustin forgot to call to have it turned on Friday lol) and the night before it gets turned on it decides to SNOW in MARCH! Thank god the guy was able to make it in the snow and we didn't freeze too much ;) We had our first snow ball fight in our new back yard that day and the girls had a blast!

Now we get to look forward to Destiny's 2nd birthday party here at our new home, I'm just not so sure about baking her cake/cupcakes (haven't decided) in a gas oven! I am a bit intimidated by the gas oven/stove haha! I am glad safeway is just down the street if I decide baking here is too much of a challenge LOL. I still just can't believe Destiny will be two... CRAZINESS.

I will be doing more "crafting" very soon- Just gotta get it all unpacked/organized first ;)

I think I may try this one very soon, the girls need more pajama pants that FIT... :)
http://www.danamadeit.com/2012/03/jammies-and-jammies.html



So until next time... <3