Shorts pyjamas in honour of my apiary!
The box is in place, the seeds have been planted, and now I have the pyjamas to match!
Oh, how I looked forward to starting a blog post with those words.
There has been a bit of a tidy up in my back garden in the last year. Basically the furthest section from the house is a bit wild, mainly because there is steep drop. For the last 20 odd years it’s all been obscured from view by a large tree, which I had cut down last July. So now I can see the wild part of the garden, and decided that I would turn it into a mini wildlife reserve – which is grand way of saying that I got a bee box for Christmas, which is now in position and ready for baby bees next year.
Bee box
It’s not a bee hive. There won’t be any honey. This is about solitary bees. The ones that are crucial to the ongoing existence of a lot of vegetation by spreading pollen. So I have planted some wild flowers as well in the hopes of attracting bees.
So I went to Sewing for Pleasure with the intention of looking for some fabric for some short pyjamas for the summer, and I hadn’t been there long when I found this Rose and Hubble bee fabric. Perfect!
Except that I hadnt been there long enough to have thought through how much 112cm wide fabric I might need. Well, the answer is that I would need more than I had bought.
Now I was also on the hunt for some lingerie elastic, but left the show disappointed on that score (and remain disappointed still…) and amazingly, a recent eBay supplier of knicker elastic happened to also have 1m of bee fabric at a mere £5 a metre. It was meant to be mine.
The pattern is Kirsten Martensson’s Kwik Sew 2811. I don’t use Kwik Sew patterns very often. There were very few markings but I managed without them. My biggest gripe is that the seam allowance is only 6mm. Now I was taught to make nightwear and children’s clothing with flat felled seams, and it’s very fiddly to sew flay felled seams with only 6mm of seam to play with. So I rather laboriously stitched each seam 3 times: on the machine, then stitched the seam allowances together on the overlocker, and then top stitched. I also don’t like the way that the facing is finished at the shoulder. I did miss a stage when I didn’t finish the shoulder facing on the overlocker…… So I ended up zig zagging the shoulder facing to the shoulder seam. I’ll see how well it survives as I roll from shoulder to shoulder during sleep.
Finishing on the shoulder
I actually made the sewing simpler than the pattern. I finished the shorts with elastic and missed out the ties. I only used one fabric, rather than creating a contrast collar and sleeve cuffs. Note how I deliberately placed the bees carefully on both pieces. And I left off the pocket. I also haven’t top stitched round the edge of the facing, hoping it will be kept in place by the buttons and button holes. I can always go back and top stitch if it flaps about, but I don’t think that it will.
Despite a bit of criticism above, I really like the results, and assuming they don’t fall apart after a few wears, I may well use the pattern again for both the winter and summer versions.
This was made almost totally in the evenings after work; a new joy now that the clocks have changed and there is good light up to about 7:30 p.m.
One comment on “Shorts pyjamas in honour of my apiary!”
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One Week, One Pattern
Me Made May 2016
Me Made May 2015
Simplicity Competition
Sew Over it Patterns
all my own work by ann 
These are so cute. I love this fabric!