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!
This is a project that I had been wanting to do for sooooooo long! For those of you who aren't up on your sci-fi British television, and more specifically the show Doctor Who, the T.A.R.D.I.S. is the time traveling spaceship belonging to a human looking alien with two hearts who has a particular soft spot for Earth. It looks like an emergency police call box, is partially sentient (and has named herself Sexy), and is a magnitude larger on the inside than on the outside. The Doctor, a companion and potentially a variety of friends (Oh Jack, why do you never show up anymore!) go on various scary/heartwarming/mysterious adventures though space and time.
Anyhow, this all started when on a whim I searched Doctor Who on Spoonflower, not expecting to find much of anything. Instead I found pages and pages of results. Now, I would love some mildly tacky TV theme fabric, but at $17.50/yard (yard! not even a proper meter!) plus shipping it was all a bit too rich for my tastes. I have to say though, the 10th Doctor apron fabric and the tesselated TARDIS are pretty hard to resist.
The two lino stamps on the left for the TARDIS and light rays, and a foam stamp for the vortex on the right.
Instead, I headed to the art store and bought all the pieces needed to carve some lino stamps and some water based screen printing ink in silver and gold. A few evenings were spent carving the stamps, and now I can print as many TARDIS-es as I could ever want. MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! HAHA!!!! HAHAH!!!!! *cough, cough* (I may have gone an bought some metallic blue paint. You know, for cards, and white fabric, and, well, everything and anything else that may ever need a TARDIS on it.)
The next stop was the fabric store to look for some appropriately blue all natural fiber fabric. I was wandering everywhere from the upholstery to the quilting sections muttering to myself and making the sewing store ladies scratch their head. I had never really looked at the content of broadcloth before and had just assumed that it was just cotton so that was where I headed first. It was only 60% cotton and the rest was polyester. I was lucky enough to find exactly what I was looking for in the end. It's not heavy enough to be quilting weight, but it is heavier than broadcloth. Is there a name for that?
As previously mentioned, it was the end of the bolt, and it ended up being in three pieces. I printed the two larger pieces in the pattern in the first photo, and then printed the ends of the short piece in two different types of border prints as seen the right photo above, and the photo below. When I had started out, the plan was for a fluffy maybe layered, maybe not, gathered skirt, however I'm not happy enough with the print to wear it out in public. I really want to, but I think these are slated to be epic pjs worn around others only when I know they are aware of, or share my obsession so when I inevitably start scampering around singing the theme song, or make the dematerialization noise they won't be too, too startled.
So in the end, was it any cheaper? Extremely. Admittedly, the printing process from fabric purchase, to washing, drying, ironing, stamp carving, stamping, to ironing again took several days and was more labour intensive than expected, and the print is nowhere near perfect. However, it is definitely unique, an actual random pattern, and quite pretty if I do say so myself. I tried to cheap out and made homemade felt stamp pads, and while they worked, I had to either stand on, or kneel on the stamps to get enough pressure to have decent transfer. Also, because I was standing, and would occasionally lose balance while on the stamp, it would tip and leave a mark from the wood block as well. I have since purchased a brayer and will hopefully be printing a "good" version of this fabric for a dress or skirt in the future.
For about 4m of fully printed fabric:
$15.00 -lino handle and blades
$7.00 -30x15cm sheet of lino
free -blocks of scrap wood and gorilla glue
$4.00 -on sale100% cotton fabric (reg. ~ $8)
$2.75 x 2 -on sale Speedball water based screenprinting ink in 75cc tubes in gold and silver (reg. ~ $6)
And to conclude, I leave you with a song I unexpectedly found while searching the work server, The Timelords with their song "Doctorin' The Tardis".
