Sew a Little Seam Movie Night PJs pattern review

I had this jersey fabric with large dinosaurs* that had been picked out by my grand-daughter for a pair of pyjamas for her birthday. So all I needed now was a pattern! I had two PDF patterns, both freebies, and I wasn't sure which to use. So I asked a question in a Facebook group I belong to, the Baby and Kids PDF Sewing Patterns Group: "Opinions please - Ellie and Mac Grow with Me pyjamas, or Sew A Little Seam Movie Night pyjamas - for an size 8-10 year old and a 3-4 year old? And why?"

* It's called Stof of Denmark Avalana Organic Jersey – Dinosaurs

I fully expected to get views in favour of both, but in fact the responses were almost all for the Sew a Liitle Seam Movie Night pyjamas, so that made my decision a lot easier! And below, you can find out how I got on, and whether I agreed with those views.

Readers of my blog will know that I do quite often use free patterns, or use them as a basis for a hacked pattern. It's not just because I'm mean! I do use paid for patterns, too. But to be honest, I probably wouldn't use a paid for pattern from someone that I had not been able to try first via a free pattern.

The Movie Night pyjamas was a pattern I'd downloaded quite some time ago. I'm not an enthusiastic sewer of knit fabrics. But this was the perfect opportunity to try it. I won't spend time in this post telling you how I deal with knits on my sewing machine, as I've already written a post about that. I'll just summarise the main points. I made the full length pants, with an elastic waistband, no placket, regular full length sleeves. There are several options like having a placket, gathered sleeves, etc. I just went for what seemed to me to be the easiest way to produce some warm winter pyjamas.

The pattern pieces went together pretty easily, and I made a size 10, for Fleur's 7th birthday. This doesn't necessarily imply that I think the pattern is sized too small. Fleur is very tall for her age, plus, as you'll see from the pictures, our family favour loose-ish garments with some room for growth. These will do her for the whole winter and maybe part of next winter too. At the same time, they are not miles too long or wide.

However, I used the size 7 length of elastic for the waistband, rather than the 23.5" for a 10 year old. I could possibly even have taken it down half and inch more. I cut 22" and overlapped by 1". 

She's happy with them sitting on to her hips.

Lacking an overlocker / serger, I used a triple stitch to make the seams, trimmed the seam allowance a bit, and finished with a zigzag stitch, using an overcast foot. I was happy with the finish.

Clipping the sleeves in was easy too. I've seen some comments suggesting people have found the sleeves too small (or was it too large?). I just gently eased them to fit and the result was fine.

One other area where I've noticed people commenting was fitting the neckband. The first thing to note is that when you find the quarter points on the neckband and the neckline, the quarter points on the neckline are NOT on the shoulder seams. I think this is where some people go wrong. Because the front neckline is deeper than the back, it is longer, therefore the quarter points fall in front of the shoulders. You can hopefully see the pins, below. (And the right and left side are the same, it's just my poor photography may make it look as though the distances between the shoulder seams and the pins are not the same on each side.)

Having done this, I pretty much followed the instructions given for attaching the neckband. Again, with no overlocker, I switched to a double needle to do the overstitching, and 'stitched in the ditch' so that one line of the double stitching was hidden in the seam.

I also used the double needle to complete the hem of the top. 

Finally, I followed the instructions for the bands on the cuffs. Again, I used the double needle for the top stitching. But, unfortunately, because I had actually done these before doing the neckband, I hadn't at that stage thought of the stitching in the ditch idea. So I'd got both lines of stitching showing, which I don't think looks as nice as the single line, next to the black.

I think the only other thing I did differently (which is rare for me - I do mess about with patterns) was to add a little tag into the back of the pants, so she could get them on the right way round.

So how would I sum up? Well, the pattern is free, and I couldn't find any faults with it! In future, I might make it without the cuffs (i.e. just make hems, with double stitching), as I can't see that they add anything (and it's less work to make them without). They are a little narrow for our taste - we generally prefer looser cut clothes - you can see how narrow these are on her calves. But many people really like snug fitting clothes, so that really isn't a quibble, just personal taste. Will I use the pattern again? Yes, almost certainly. Do I recommend it? Definitely.