I received Stylish Sewing by Laura Wilhelm as a birthday present last year and beyond looking at the pictures hadn’t made anything in the book.
I decided I would have a go at the Women’s pyjamas shown on the front cover of the book. I would dearly love to be able to make some trousers or even jeans, but I thought I’d start out cautiously with some pyjama trousers first. I particularly like the embroidered flower feature which gives the project an interesting touch.
One of the best things about this book are the full-sized patterns. I found it reasonably easy to trace the pattern onto tracing paper.
I bought two fabrics for the project before Chrsitmas. I’m not sure they quite live up to the “Stylish” standards in Laura’s book. In fact they are probably a combination worthy of sitting alongside my other “Coco the clown” pyjamas. I didn’t want to resort to expensive designer fabric ranges, but I did have a really tricky time trying to find two fabrics that looked good together and ended up with a red polka dot fabric and a blue check with small red hearts.
Pyjama trouser fabrics
At this point I encountered a problem. The project specifies 1.8m for size 8/10, but doesn’t seem to show the fabric width to which this applies. I suppose I could have worked out the fabric required from the size of my pattern pieces. However, being in a hurry to start the project I decided not to check and just went ahead and bought my 1.8 m. Even in the shop, I was thinking – “that’s way too much!”
When I started to cut out the pieces in the evening, of course, it was too much fabric. Then annoyingly, after much searching, I found at the back of the book, the width measurement for the fabric range. It was given as 115 cm, whereas my fabric was 145 cm. I think that there is an assumption that anyone using the book would use the fabrics in the book, which is a shame as us scrimping seamstresses, enjoy finding our fabrics at cheaper shops. Perhaps it would have been better if the fabric length suggestions had been calculated for both the standard widths and added in the book on the page with the project instructions. Never mind, I could make two sets of pyjama trousers, or more ambitiously, I could make a top to complete the look. Although perhaps wearing the two in combination would be migraine inducing for everyone else!
Steely Seamstress 