My love for Harts Fabric is well-documented on this blog so obviously when they asked me to be a part of #sewnwithhart I said yes, of course, duh, any time!! The awesome ladies at Harts sent over this lovely dark blue railroad stripe shirting and coordinating white cotton for me to try out something new–a Closet Case Carolyn pajama shirt lengthened to a nightshirt!
This cute pinstriped fabric is absolutely the perfect weight and feel for pajamas. In fact, I had asked about several different shirting fabrics and the very nice people there were kind enough to steer me towards this particular one and pick out a white fabric in the same weight to make piping.
To make the top into a dress, I added 8 inches to the hem. If you are less pear-shaped than me, you could probably just add 8 inches and call it a day, but I usually make a size 6 shirt and 10 pants. Since I knew that the Carolyn top would be snug around my hips (I tried to pull it up over my butt and, yeah, no) I ended up mushing it together with the hem of the Sewaholic Oakridge blouse, and then adding 8 inches. The hem of the Oakridge is about half an inch wider than that of the Carolyn, so hacking them together added about 2 inches of circumference to the hips. I don\’t have a tutorial on how to do this–I literally just overlaid the two patterns and sort of… traced both. I eyeballed it. You know. Also, if you are thinking, \”oh, when did you make the Oakridge?\” I haven\’t, I just trust Sewaholic to fit over my hips, so it was convenient.
Other than that, I didn\’t make any other changes to this pattern, and just skipped the pants entirely! One reason I like making dresses is that you get a whole outfit and I never feel like it is any harder than a shirt. This is extra true for something like this! All the harder parts–collar, piping–are all on the top half, so by extending the length it\’s literally no harder, and you can skip making shorts or pants. Plus, of course, a sweet little menswear-style pajama dress is always cute.
I\’ve saved my altered pattern pieces for the longer version and anticipate using them as much or more than the originals–I just love this cuter version!
xoxo,
Very cute. The bow on the pocket is a great addition!