On a recent shopping trip to bucktown with the girls, we popped into the Needle Shop. I saw this fabric and had to have it for some pajama pants for the boy.

I always pre-wash my fabric (or pre-dry clean it, if it is dry clean only) to remove any factory sizing and to preshrink it before cutting. In this case, the fabric shrunk quite a lot during pre-washing. Even though I would have had a few inches to spare before washing, after washing, the fabric was about four inches too short for the pattern.

The pattern was for pajama pants with a cut-on waistband. This means that instead of cutting separate strips of fabric for the waistband and sewing them onto the top of the pants (a sewn-on waistband, because you sew it on, get it?), the waistband was all one piece with the pants. To make the elastic casing in this kind of waistband, you just fold the top of the waistband down, stitch it in place to make a tube, and run the elastic through it. This means that the pants pattern is elongated at the waist, though, because the waistband and pants are all one piece.

So I redrafted the pattern to make it a sewn-on waistband, cut the waistband pieces on the cross-grain, and voila, I had enough fabric to make the pants, after all.

Danger Boy loves them. He said he's going to declare tomorrow an official Underpants Day after school gets out so that he can wear them all day after school.

The fabric is really lovely. I would absolutely buy it again, but I would buy extra for shrinkage!

By the way, I hate the new blogger interface. Am I the only one? I can't figure out why one picture is floating in the middle and the other is right justified.