It’s summer. It’s hot. We don’t have AC. And the twins are convinced it’s not bedtime without jammies… so we need jammies. All their jammies are, well, winter jammies. long sleeves, long legs.
We were going to buy them. But all the summer weight jammies at the second hand store were, well, underwhelming. A lot of pilled up polyester.
So when I had a couple of unexpected sewing hours this past weekend, I decided to try whipping up a couple of nighties. The twins each selected their favourite fabric from their fabric bin, and for a pattern I pulled out McCall’s M9565, which is apparently in my stash although I have no clue where I got it. My envelope tops out at a size three, which is technically the twins current size. McCall’s kids patterns tend to run big, but on the other hand the twins are almost four and starting to outgrow their RTW size three clothes, especially Tris (who is over 2” taller than River at this point). I also considered Jalie 3245, which would make a great raglan summer nightie in the tunic view, but I didn’t really want to trace and was comfortable just cutting out the size 3 of the McCall’s pattern.
Well, I needn’t have worried about the size. They came out HUGE. Falling off River’s (admittedly narrow) shoulders. Even Tris’s I took in at the side seams 5/8” on each side. For River’s, I had to cut off the original neckband, take each raglan sleeve in 5/8”, and then take in the side seams even more. And it’s still not exactly snug—they’ll be wearing these for a while.
They are also long. You’ll notice the pattern cover shows a ruffle at the bottom. I wasn’t sure about adding it, but when the dresses turned out just shy of ankle-length it became obvious that was not going to happen. Which is fine. River has been on a kick about long dresses lately.
The pattern was for a long-sleeved nightie, but obviously I wanted short sleeves for summer. I picked a fairly arbitrary length that wound up being just above elbow length. River liked this but Tris did not, wanting them extra short. So I modified hers into more of a cap-sleeve style.
There’s not much more to say. They were sewn very quickly on the not-so-good serger, and several times as I sat down I had to readjust all the tension settings because the twins just can’t resist fiddling with that. I hemmed them with the coverstitch and they’re certainly not my tidiest but also whatever—they’re summer sleepwear. At least the twins were excited and happy about them, which is better than those mermaid tails I made them, that they’ve played with all of twice. A new challenge did arise this time: keeping each twin from throwing shade on the other’s choices. Tris didn’t like River’s fabric. River didn’t like the white sleeves on Tris’s (a necessity since we didn’t have much of Tris’s fabric, but I always think contrast sleeves look better on a raglan sleeve). But both are happy with their own dresses, which is the most important part.
Not that I could convince them to pose together.
Tanit-Isis Sews 