Doctor Who TARDIS Pajamas

These pajamas have been a while in the making.  The fabric is hand printed from lino stamps in silver and gold screen printing ink on royal blue cotton and completed back in 2013 (blogged about here).  At that time, I concluded that a sleep wear set would likely be the best use.  More recently, the sacrificial pink shorts pattern was modified into an elastic waist pattern, and the blouse muslin-ing exercises took care of the top. Two years later, they have finally come to be!

As I was making them, my family rightly pointed out that these go somewhat beyond your typical pajamas.  In fact, would posit that they are more in line with Barney Stinson's Suitjamas.  I wanted a convertible collar and piping and buttons and a yoke, and so I got them.  I'm also going to be doing some pretty extensive travelling over the next year, so I'm happy I will have a more than presentable set of jammies to wear while at hostels, friends' homes and other places.  Isn't the ability to sew whatever you want wonderful?

For the piping (and inside yoke), I used a finely printed quilting cotton.  The gold tone of the vortexes isn't a true bright, warm yellow colour, but rather a darker greenish yellow instead, so finding something to match was tricky.  I then used this method to create a continuous strip of bias tape, which was then wrapped around some chunky yarn to make the piping.

 I used Gigi Sews' method to sew the yoke and collar (it's pretty hard to get your head around what's going on if you aren't following along irl, but straightforward enough otherwise) which allowed me to enclose almost every seam, then used a fancy stretch stitch on all other exposed seams to prevent fraying.

I'm quite happy with the shorts.  The piping was really fun to sew, as each leg is one continuous piece sewn in one go: down, around and up again.  The side panels were not originally planned but I was running out of yardage in the first panel of printed fabric and was hesitant to cut into the second.  I took out about 2" of  ease from the middle of my single piece pattern to make it fit.  My logic was that they were elastic waist sleep shorts, and a few inches of ease either way wouldn't make a big different.  Nope.  After trying them on, it had obviously not been a good idea.  I had arrived in snuggle-bun and wedgie land.  Somehow taking out fabric width wise had not only made them too tight around for the style, but it also pulled down the rise significantly.  I also think my original draft likely needed more ease in the first place.  I did end up cutting out the inserts from the next panel, but happily it was only about a 5" strip.  I want to make another pair of these for everyday wear.  I can imagine adding a pocket into the side panel if it were made wider.

I am happy with the top as well, thought the pattern still needs a few tweaks.  The armhole is ok, but should be dropped another 0.5-1", and there's a tiny bit of excess fabric across the upper chest width wise but I'm not 100% sure where it's coming from.  The sleeve I ended up with works well, and most importantly, I can cross my arms with ease!