Recycling / Upcycling project - glamorous PJ's

When I was recently away at Hanmer Springs with friends they all had pretty PJ's. I was wearing some PJ's I had bought from the Op Shop for $4 a few years ago. Oh how I realised that I needed to upgrade my look. So when I got home I looked for flannel fabric online. Yes I could get some great stuff but at a great price, it would cost me more to make them than to buy a brand new pair at a normal store.

With that in the back of my mind when I was scavenging the Op Shop's I found a sort of nightshirt. It has birds and pink on a brown background. It was too split up the sides and too short to be decent to walk around the house in. But it was in exceptionally good condition and I could see that a few tweaks to it would make it look better. So for $4.50 I took it home.

But then I could not find material to match, until I was out in the garage looking at my material shop (that is what I call all my stash of fabric) and found a bit of leftover flannelette sheeting. I had used this sheet as the backing for one of my soft and cuddly kiddies quilts. Yes it was a perfect match for the pattern on my top and there was enough material left over.

So I chopped up an old pair of PJ bottoms (50 cents from the op shop) to use as a pattern. I cut it in half down the middle then leave one side sewn up so that I can use that as a guide to sew up my new bottoms and the other side I cut into pattern pieces. Cut them and sewed them. It only took about 1 1/2 hours in total to complete them. And I am so pleased with myself putting contrast piping around the bottom of the legs to make them look that they belong together. (Don't look too closely as one leg is definitely finished a whole lot better than the other leg). There I have it - a new set of PJ's to go to smart places in the winter in.


Total cost:
pj bottoms for pattern 0.50
pj top 4.50
piping 0.50 (remnant from Fabric Vision)
ribbon for waist 3.00 (from Blackwells in Kaiapoi)
elastic 0.10 ( I got a 20 metre roll at Stash Rehash this year)
$8.60