I’m continuing to toil away making Christmas gifts, but due to the fact that my family and friends read this site, I can’t really get away with spoiling the surprise by posting many photos here! But my friend (and will-be bridesmaid!) Pip is a lady who knows what she wants, and who knows to get her gift requests in early, so hers isn’t a surprise at all!
She had a pair of RTW pyjamas that she really liked, except that they were made in polyester satin and she’d much rather they were made of silk for comfort’s sake. So I took her specifications and found that Jalie 2686 was almost identical to her other pair of pyjamas. On top of the fabric difference, Pip also wanted to leave off the chest pocket and turn the half-elastic, half-drawstring waist into an entirely drawstring one, both of which were easy changes with this pattern.
So I ordered the pattern, got fresh measurements from Pip, and bought some beautiful purple silk charmeuse from Classic Textiles on Goldhawk Road, which (you’ll recall) I ran all the way home with.
Since Jalie include 3/8” seam allowances instead of the standard 5/8”, I couldn’t easily make the French seams I usually use on silks, so I instead decided to try just overlocking all the edges and sewing the seams normally with a microtex sharp needle on my sewing machine. Though this involved a lot of back’n‘forth between the sewing machine and the overlocker, this method looks really nice and neat inside and means I could’ve adjusted the seams after her fitting if necessary.
I sewed up the bulk of these pyjamas in a weekend, but left the trouser hem, top button placement, and back darts until after our fitting, which ended up being in a pub toilet! Boy, we got some strange looks pin-fitting silky pyjamas in there! We were expecting to make some fitting darts in the front, but as it turned out, the back was the only place they were needed (apologies for the wrinkly back photos above – they’d not had their final press when daylight was still with us!).
The eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed that the pyjamas are missing the bottom two buttons in the photos (if so – well spotted!). This is because I wasn’t really paying attention when I was figuring out the button placement – I measured the distance between the top button place and the bottom button place then divided by 5 buttons, when if fact I should’ve divided by the 4 spaces in between buttons. By the time I’d realised, the buttonholes were already sewn and cut so I’ve left off one button to take with me to the shop to buy a 6th one. Oops!
Button mishaps aside, I’m incredibly pleased with how these turned out, and the whole time I was working with this silk I was really jealous that these aren’t going to be mine! The silk is incredibly luxurious and just feels absolutely divine. I think Pip is really going to love the end result (she barely let me take them off her at the fitting!).
(Sharing the photo with Pip’s pyjamas is my newest best friend – the first working radiator on the boat!! Central heating feels almost as luxurious to me as the silk…)