Christmas Pajamas

Giving your kids new pajamas on Christmas Eve isn't anything new, but it is something we've never done in our family before.  It always seemed like a fun tradition but I didn't feel like adding it to the list of things that I had to get done during the holiday season so it never happened.  Then this summer while I was in Alabama I found some coordinating flannel on clearance and bought it with the intention of making Christmas pajamas for the whole family.

One would think that from July to December I would find some time to make those pajamas.  Instead the fabric sat on top of my sewing to-do pile, silently mocking my plans of everyone wearing matching pajamas on Christmas morning.  Finally, eight days before Christmas I got started sewing thinking that if I sewed one pair of pajamas a day I would finish in plenty of time, especially since I'd already given up on making pajamas for Jared and myself.  Instead, I made two pairs the first day and then didn't do another thing for four or five days and then I made two more pairs. It wasn't until the day before Christmas Eve that I finally finished the last pair of pants.


Here's what I learned from my pajama making adventure:

  • Start with the largest pair of pants and work your way to the smallest. Then you won't have to try and figure out how to cut out big pajamas from the small pieces of fabric that are leftover from making little pajamas.  The pattern pieces for Madison's aren't all cut exactly on the grain, but they worked out after some tricky pattern placement.  
  • Making your own patterns takes way more time than actually sewing the pajama pants.  I can sew a pair of pants in under an hour now that I've got the technique down, but measuring a child, drafting the pattern, laying it out on the fabric, and then cutting it out takes a lot of time.
  • It's important to remember which seam is the front and which is the back.  Pants feel funny when they're on backward.  Add a tag to those pants!
  • My kids would have been happy with store bought pajamas or no new pajamas at all.  Sometimes the only person adding stress to my life is me.  But I did love the matching pajamas on Christmas morning!

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