Thursday, May 6, 2010

New life to some jammies...

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about up-cycling and re-purposing clothing. I've got plenty of projects swirling around in my head so I'm really hoping I can blog some of them out. This project is honestly kinda boring but it's practical. I do have funner projects brewing :)


So fixing up some jammies....the toes on this pair of sleepers has blown out. But this tutorial may also be helpful if the legs on your kiddos sleepers have gotten to short or if your little one (like mine) is going crazy in footed pj's. Now that our daughter is walking footed jammies are also driving me crazy. After getting this pair fixed up I realized I could also cut off the legs and arms of the sleepers and turn them into summer sleepers.

You'll need scissors, a sewing machine (you could also hand stitch too), thread, and some scraps of knit fabric (an old t-shirt with some stretch would work well). I used my serger but a sewing machine will work just as well.

First cut off the feet of the sleepers *be sure that you cut down far enough from the bottom snap to allow you sewing room below the snap, otherwise you'll be hitting the snap when sewing and that's just a pain* On this pair I left about 1.25" below the last snap and it was perfect. Baste along the bottom edge about 1/4" this just helps keeps the pieces aligned when you sew the cuffs on later.














Cut two rectangles from your knit scraps, these will become the cuffs. Make them approximately 5" by 3.25" (the pair of sleepers I'm working on are a 24m size so depending on the size of your sleepers you may need to make the rectangles smaller or larger). Fold them in half so that the two shorter end meet. Sew along this end, leaving 1/4" seam allowance.














Then fold the rectangle into itself so that seam becomes hidden (I should've taken a better picture of this). What you'll have is a cuff so the raw edge will be sewn onto the raw edge of the leg of the sleepers and the folded edge will be the bottom of the cuff.














Now pin the cuff to the sleeper legs. Pin them together so that the raw edge of the cuff and the raw edge of the sleeper meet and they're right sides together. Then sew along the cuff, leave a seam allowance of 1/4" or so. Remove your pins and fold down the new cuffs.














See, good as new! I know my daughter is going to love her new found foot freedom in these jammers :)

2 comments:

Melissa said...

Practical projects are my favourite. Nothing boring about them! Thanks for sharing, although my daughter Wednesday is our of footies, lots of her cousins are not. :)

County Cloth Creations said...

thanks Melissa, I like practical projects too :) I've since finished off another pair of these re-footed pj's and I wish I'd though of it months ago.