Pajama pants patterns

Pajamas are one of the enduring pleasures in life, small but important. One should definitely own enough to endure these long winter evenings in comfort, and if possible in style. Choice of fabric will usually ensure the latter, no matter what your personal preferences might be. I'm lucky enough to own a great old-fashioned pajama pattern from McCall's, but it's unfortunately way out of print. And many modern patterns that purport to be for pajamas lack some of the essential comfort features. So let me show you how to adapt any pair of pants pattern for yourself, step by step. If possible, start with a Burda pattern, which will be much better cut than any other commercial US pattern to begin with.

Bagginess

It should go without saying that part of what makes a good pair of pajama pants is that they're baggy. Pajamas mean comfort, and skin-tight stuff in woven fabric has never been comfortable enough. If you want skin-tightness, you could get yourself one of those cute red union suits and leave it at that. And if you want to look that sexy, just take off the damn pajamas! So read my article on ease and make sure you are allowing plenty for your size, and the thickness of flannel.

No side seams

Another pet peeve of mine is pajamas with side seams. Most of these don't have pockets, which are the main justification for side seams. Now as an old die-hard feminist I'm not at all against pockets, au contraire, and I understand that if you spend a lot of time in your pajamas it's convenient to have them (just last week I locked myself out taking out the recycling, in my poodle pajamas). But in this case I recommend flat patch pockets on the butt, which are functional enough when you need them but don't bite into anything.

My early exposure to home ec consisted mostly of making baby shirts (for 10 year olds!! I hope they've rethought that idea), and there was a lot of emphasis on making seams as smooth as possible, little French seams with no exposed stitches etc. But take it from me, there are no seams as smooth as no seams. Especially since serged seams are the most practical to finish flannel for the long run, talk about exposing threads... If you're going to spend any time lying on your side, semi-conscious, you don't want any side seams at all.

Putting front and back together So the way to do this is to put both sides of your pattern together, with the leg hems even, and separated by however much extra ease you've decided will allow you to curl up on the couch comfortably. Draw in the missing waist part so you get a continuous curve from front to back with no odd bubbles. Then figure out how wide you want the legs to be, which may be wider than the regular pants pattern (or not depending on your feelings about drafts) and then the difference between that number and the distance the sides of the legs are now from each other. Then mark exactly half the difference in from each side, and smoothly redraw the side seams, tapering to zero at the crotch.

Bubble butt

Many so-called pajamas also sport a nice fitted butt. Well, in my experience pajamas are usually worn curled up. Curled up on the couch, curled up on your side in bed, doesn't matter, the main position is never more than briefly vertical. Any pant pattern is usually a delicate balance between what looks good when standing, and what is possible and looks reasonable when sitting. This may lead to some subtle adjustments of your favorite pattern for pants that will primarily be worn leaning against a bar looking cool, or conversely that will do time sitting at work. But in the case of pajamas we can hardly go too far in the bubble-butt direction.

Redrawing the crotch seam The idea is to make the crotch a bit lower, and to make the back crotch seam longer. For a truly average US woman, ie size 14, I'd say at least an inch lower and a couple inches longer. But you want to keep the back inseam length the same, or you'll run into some really hairy construction problems. So the easy way is to rotate the entire pattern around a pivot point at the lower inside of the back inseam and trace that seam as is. You can then redraw the back crotch seam to be roughly the same shape as before, getting back to the original middle back at the waist with a slightly more expansive curve. Don't stress about rulers and exactness, it's really not necessary to turn this into an engineering project.