Pyjama love

Finished the Oliver+S pyjamas a couple of days ago and they were road-tested last night. Overall I'm really pleased with how they turned out although I have a couple of issues with how seams are finished and some potential weak spots in the construction. I hate admitting I don't find them perfect because I wanted to! I love the look of the patterns and their blog and want to support smaller businesses, it seems right to me. The issues are really just niggles that I can easily fix the next time around but for a pattern that seems to be marketing itself as suitable for beginners I have to wonder how satisfied they'd be with the finished article and how much they'd blame themselves for the bits that don't work out so well? Perhaps I'm being too picky, but the instructions for finishing the seams suggest ways that to me are just a bit...half-assed. Whatever, the finished product is still darned cute and I can fix the problems next time around like I said.

Here is Hazel sporting them this morning on the unmade spare bed (oh how I cringe at this because someone once posted a rant about people who post photos with piles of laundry in the background, or filthy floors etc. and it must have hit a nerve!)



I love this flanelette, it was a Trade Me buy a couple years ago and it's deliciously thick and brushed on both sides. No idea how old it is but the quality of the fabric suggests some antiquity! Initially I thought of it as being very Nana-ish but as I sewed it into this kimono style I realised that it's actually quite oriental in design, if not colours! Flanelette or flanel, what's the difference anyways?



I love the white flanel trim I put on, it makes them look so wintery and clearly non-seasonal (see next post). They're too long though, I'll have to take up the pants a bit. They're also good for doing somersaults in :)



This morning, other than model pyjamas, we had a first birthday party to attend (small giraffe glimpsed in above photos was the gift). I've been quite take with this idea of furoshiki, the fabric gift wraps from Japan (I think I've got the right term there) and have done it for a couple of people recently. I thought for Arlo we could stamp some cotton with Hazel's animal stamps to make it more fun. I used some fabric pens to colour in the stamps and Hazel helped stamp the cloth before I heat set it.



It worked very well! I wasn't as pleased with how it looked wrapped though, I think the giraffe was a bit too big for the cloth and the parcel looked a bit small with most of the stamps hidden. If I do it again I'll definitely do a much larger piece of fabric.



Great fun and the beginning of my adventures with creating my own stamped fabrics!