Sewing Family Lounge Pants and Woven Joggers – Great for Beginners

Hello! Today is a post about .. sewing, relaxing, grace, hope, and kindness. I had every good intention this year of sewing my entire family Christmas PJs, but that DID NOT happen. Such is 2020. Instead, I made a set for one kid and two bottoms for me!

The Pattern

The pattern that I used for our bottoms is the Greenstyle Lounge Pants. It is a unisex sewing pattern that includes kid sizes 3-14 (which includes hips measuring 22-34 inches) and adult sizes B-M (which includes hips measuring from 32-62 inches). The pattern is drafted for woven fabrics such as flannel, quilting cotton, lawn, voile, silk, rayon, etc.

The pattern has a wide straight leg option like a traditional pajama pant or a slimmer jogger style leg option. The jogger style can be finished with a knit cuff or with an elastic casing.

The straight leg traditional pajama has multiple lengths of shorts as well as long pants. These are the shortest short options.

More importantly. Yes, it has pockets!

The pattern includes 2 rises. My blue/green jogger style pair is the higher rise. It hits at my natural waist.

The shorts I made are the midrise.

The kids pattern has only one rise option. My daughter found it roomy, which I loved because that means it will fit her for longer.

The red top that she is wearing is a Lee Raglan that I made her out of cotton lycra. It is one of my go-to staple quick knit patterns for my kids.

Back to the pants, the most important part of these pajamas is the ability to LOUNGE in them. With a woven, you need extra ease to sit, relax, and cuddle up without feeling restricted or like your pants are digging into you.

I had lots of fun taking photos of me sitting down. I really don’t do that often enough, but it’s especially important when the purpose of a garment is to relax.

I recently got the Magnolia Table at the library, and it has some great recipes!

My oldest daughter made the silk pie a few days after these photos. It was SO YUM!

At the beginning of this post I also said we would talk about these things such as relaxing, grace, hope, and kindness, so we will dive into the non-sewing part next. Before we do that, here are some resources that I used for all the handmade garments in this post.

Resources

1. Greenstyle Lounge pants pattern is FREE with any $15 purchase for the month of December. You can also get it on sale for $6 without any minimum purchase.
2. The blue/green fabric is a quilting cotton designed by Amy Butler. The fabric collection is Cameo, and this particular print is Angelica.
3. The shorts fabric is Liberty of London Tana Lawn.
4. My daughter’s pants are made from Hello Kitty flannel from Joanns. I had no recollection of buying it and the selvage says 2013!
5. My daughters top is the Made for Mermaids Lee raglan.
6. My top is a P4P pumpkin spice dolman top I made several years ago out of sweater knit.

Disclosures

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive a small compensation when you purchase via my link. This does not cost you anything, and I genuinely appreciate the support. Any and all opinions expressed are still my own.

Relaxing

Relaxing is hard for me. I think I have a mindset that I have to constantly be doing something or staying up late to finish everything. During the holidays, I ON PURPOSE tell myself that this is the time I want to take in every moment and allow my body to just refuel, reset, rest and be ready for a new year. 2020 was not what any of us expected, but that does not mean I am going to lose hope for the year we have ahead.

Part of allowing myself to relax/rest is NOT making a to do list, stopping to read that book on my night stand, taking that long walk to the park with my kids, making a cup of tea and watching a movie with my family, or just DOING nothing and catching up on sewing blogs. <wink> As a sewing blogger, it is nice to make things that I have no intentions of posting on the internet or blogging about. I think it is healthy to have breaks!

Grace

Give grace to yourself and to those you come in contact with. Grace to me means undeserved good things. I see it like when someone doesn’t have to do something for you that you by no means earned, but they do it anyways.  Parents are often graceful to their children (I say often because that is not always the case. I have one parent who is like this to me and another who I am estranged from.)

I give grace to myself by making sure I spend each day doing something that brings me joy and not focusing on the things that I can’t change.

You give grace to others when you don’t automatically assume the worst of people who make mistakes. Such as when you want to cuss that person out who really does deserve it, but you scroll on anyways, or if you do comment, you say something nice. How different our (internet) world would be if we had more people who showed grace!!

I started this blogpost with saying that I intended to make pajamas for my whole family. Maybe I will knock out one more pair for another one of my kids before Christmas. Maybe not, and that is OK! I hope if you are feeling the stress of the season that you also give grace to yourself and celebrate what you have finished and where you are.

Hope and Kindness

I think hope and kindness have been hard this year. Hope has been hard because our world is so different than anything we have learned to live in. Kindness has been hard, and I am not sure why. I see fighting everywhere I look online. I want to leave you with one thought today, and this is one that I (try to) think anytime I feel discouraged.  “As long as I have breath, I have hope.” as well as “I have the ability to choose how I treat you, and not how you treat me.”

If you have made it this far, thanks for reading!

XO

Sharon