Finished (Unselfish) Project: Blank Slate Patterns - Pocket PJs

A couple of months ago, when our local Hancock had its big "Going Out of Business" sale (*sigh*), I stopped by with my daughter Eva to pick at the corpse like vultures see what sort of deals there were to be had. Most of the remaining fabric wasn't anything that I was interested in, even at sale prices, and they had already shipped their stock of muslin to another local store (darn!), but I did manage to stock up on quite a few notions. I also let Eva pick out a couple of cuts of fabric for future unselfish sewing projects.

Between sewing for Eva and a few unsuccessful projects for myself, I went most of last autumn and into early winter without many wearable additions to my wardrobe, so for the past few months, I've been concentrating on sewing clothes for myself. In recent weeks, however, Eva has been showing more and more interest in watching me sew, and I felt that it was time to finally make her something from one of the cuts of fabric that she picked out. Given that she's (almost) 3 years old, everything that she picked out was a quilting cotton with a licensed character on it, so my pattern choices would be limited to pajamas. Given that our temperatures have rocketed into summer, I needed a woven PJ pattern, preferably without a collar. Enter the Blank Slate Pocket PJ pattern, which I purchased to fill out a bundle a while back, but hadn't made up yet.

This pattern not only has a collarless placket-style opening, it includes two front patch pockets, which are the perfect size for carrying around a couple of Fisher Price Little People:

Blank Slate - Pocket PJs

Blank Slate Pocket PJs on my sewing table

It's not shown in the line drawing or in any of the sample photos, but the pattern does include an option for short sleeves, which I used. I also cropped the pants at knee-length make them more appropriate for summer. I did not use a contrast fabric as was shown in the samples. Other than my changes, though, you can see that my version is pretty close to the sample photo and line drawing:

Blank Slate Pocket PJs - sample photo and line drawing

Fabric and Notions Used

 

• Fabric: Minnie Mouse quilting cotton purchased from Hancock
• Buttons: Basic shirt buttons from stash

 

Pattern Sizing, Drafting, and Alterations

 

This pattern is available in Blank Slate kids' sizes 18M - 8.

As with every Blank Slate pattern I've sewn, this one runs close to RTW sizing, maybe a touch larger. I sewed a size 3T, which is Eva's current RTW size, and it fits nicely with just enough extra room that I'm confident that she'll be able to wear it through the summer without growing out of it.

You do not get the huge amounts of excess ease with Blank Slate patterns that you do with some Big 4 kids' patterns, which is why I will happily pay a few extra dollars for these patterns rather than trying to hunt down a Big 4 version. It's nice to just be able to sew my child's RTW size rather than play sizing guessing games.

The only pattern alteration that I made this time was to shorten the pants to shorts. The short-sleeve option is included in the pattern, although not pictured anywhere on the Blank Slate website.

I ran into one issue with the drafting of the pattern, and it's one that I've encountered before with Blank Slate, so I'm guessing that this might be a drafting block issue--the sleeve cap did not have enough ease to need to be eased onto the armscye--in fact it was the other way around where I had to ease the armscye onto the sleeve. It's an easy fix to add ease to a sleeve cap, though, so I'm noting it and will adjust for the future.

Note that unlike some children's patterns, this pattern does include separate front and back pieces (clearly marked) and the curve of the sleeve cap is appropriately longer on the back side than on the front.

PDF Assembly

I didn't run into any issues assembling the PDF for this pattern. I've consistently found Blank Slate's PDF patterns to be clearly formatted and to not have any issues with the pattern lines lining up correctly.

Pattern Instructions

I found the pattern instructions and accompanying photos to be very clear. I had never sewn this type of placket before, and not only did I not need to get out the seam ripper, I think I ended up with a pretty nice-looking placket on my first try.

Not bad for a first attempt at this type of placket, right?

I only skimmed through the rest of the instructions but I found them to all look pretty reasonably easy to follow.

 

Final Thoughts

 

Eva asked  to wear her new Minnie jammies two nights in a row, so I know that I have a hit here. These pajamas are a fun twist on traditional pajamas, and what kid doesn't love pockets? I forsee this pattern getting quite a bit of use in the coming years.

They made Eva so happy that she felt like dancing!

The Minnie Jammies Dance