New Pajamas and a new stitch trick

A few days ago, I noticed my oldest daughter's belly sticking out from pajamas obviously no longer long enough to cover it.  She has grown! Again!  So, time for some new pajamas.  I have wanted to make a pair from Ottobre 6/2009 for a while now and decided this weekend was the time.  I chose to use Michael Miller (Patty Young) cotton knits from my stash.  If you are a fabricaholic, you may recall that this first group of knits from Michael Miller and Patty Young are very soft but suffered horrible shrinkage.  Thus, I washed them about five times each, on warm, with warm dry, and made loose jammies.  If they shrink more, they will still fit or if she grows there is room to grow.  Win-win.

For binding, I used Robert Kaufman Laguna lycra knit from fabric.com. This lycra is a tad thin but works great for this purpose since you double it by folding.  I think it turned out pretty cute. She loves them, so that is what really matters. I made two pairs, but the other set, in lime green, did not photo very well with the yellow background of our family room!  Ottobre 6/2009 has three pajama patterns in it, if you are interested.  It has a long sleeve pajama set (which I used), a sleeveless short nightgown, and a long sleeve long nightgown.  A good issue.

 My daughter does not like tight waistbands nor anything rough against her body, so I made a mock yoga waistband, with elastic, instead of following Otto's directions for a simple waistband made from only elastic.  This is much softer.

Now, the other thing I did with this pattern is explore using my Janome MC5200 machine to sew overedge stitching.  If you do not have a coverstitch machine, this is one way you can get the look of coverstitching with knit fabrics.  This is the overedge stitch foot, foot C for Janome.  I do not know if this foot will work on other machines so you should look into this for your particular machine.  Overedge stitching weaves the thread back and forth on two little prongs (you can see one below next to the clear brush) and sews a binding, of sorts, down the edge of the seam. But,  I figured out that you can also use this foot to create a mock coverstitch.  Here is a tutorial on the classic use of this foot.

Here is what my stitching looks like from the outside.

This is what the stitches looks like from the inside.

And here is what it looks like during the process.

And here is the what, why, and how.   I sew two pieces of fabric together using a straight stitch. Then, instead of serging, I switch to the overedge stitch foot and stitch the flap of fabric down from the inside.  The straight seam is my right hand guide, so it lines up with the right side of the overedge foot.  So, the overedge foot sews down the flap of fabric that my serger would have serged. Make sense?  Doing the arm side seams was a struggle, but I did it. I did not even try the leg side seams.  The rest of the garment's seams are overedge stitched so it looks a bit like a pair of Hanna Andersson long johns now!  

I am pretty proud of myself.  This foot came standard with my Janome sewing machine. Until I get a coverstitch machine, this is a pretty neat trick!