A gift for Theresa

So, I showed you some nice blouses Theresa made for me yesterday.  Now it's my turn to make something for her!

I wrote a blog just before Christmas about making gifts with themed fabrics.  Well, this was one of those cases. I saw this fabric and knew I had to make something for Theresa.  But ... WHAT??

Theresa has a very specific style for all her clothing that I just don't think I would get right.  So, in the past I've made her things like aprons.  This time, I thought I would make her some pajamas.  Our mother always made us nighties every Christmas when we were little. I looked for a pattern with a 1930s feel and this pattern (Simplicity 1762) looked like it would do nicely. I just noticed it is out of print, but can still be purchased at the Simplicity website.

To make them a little more interesting, I found a black and white stripe for the bottoms. 

The pattern calls for cording, either purchased or there are instructions for making it yourself, but I've had these 3 cards of white cording in one of my boxes for several years just crying to be sewn into something.  Solid white cording will outline the lapels and look striking on the pajama top. 

I know many people call this piping (the packaging it come in says "piping", but I was told years ago, by a very experienced New York garment district sample hand that piping is a bias fold sew into a seam WITHOUT any cord inside, so it is like a pipe.  When there is cord inside, it's call cording. 


I know ... it's a loosing battle.

And because I ALWAYS follow my own advice ... I wash and machine dry the fabrics, including the cording.  This was a good thing, too, because it shrunk quite a lot. A 91" piece of that cording shrunk to 89".  Thats about 2%.  If it wasn't pre-shrunk, the first time the pajamas were washed the lapels would cup up like a piece of bologna being fried.

At this point, I had to bag up this project and send Theresa a sketch with swatches because of the extra Simplicity work I was given in December. I have now finished and sent the finished product to her, so this will not be a spoiler.

Over the next two days I am going to show you how I applied the cording to the lapels and what I do to ease in a lot of extra fabric when setting in a sleeve.


So, until tomorrow ...