Pillowcases to Women's Shortie Pajamas Tutorial - OR MC Hammer Loves My Jam(mie)s

Not Hammer Pants

So. You know how sometimes you're getting your kid ready for bed - teeth are brushed, residual funk has been hosed off, softie chums extracted from who-knows-where - and it's time to wrangle an unwilling human into footie jammies? Yes?
And sometimes you're all,
"Break it down, OH-OH OH OH OH-OH OH OH OH. PAJAMA time. Can't touch this. WOAH WOAH WOAH OH OH OH OH. Can't touch this"
Because MC Hammer is hilarious and awesome, specially when you sing the lyrics to U Can't Touch This in a Jeeves and Wooster accent?
No? Just me?
Well anyway, this has nothing to do with that. This is a half-assed sort of tutorial on how to make a pair of womens shortie jammies from a pair of pillowcases.

So. Onward!
First you need to procure a pair of pillowcases. Mine came from the Dollarama, so yay for the cheapest ever. But it seems like random, last-pair-in-this-design-no-matching-sheets pillowcases are always around and on crazy sale.
Got yer pillowcases? Here're mine:

The first step is to unpick the stitching on your piller'cases. Have at them with the seam ripper; go on, you can give it some women's-tennis-grunting if you like, I don't mind.
Now you should have EITHER two great big rectangles or 4 smaller rectangles. We're making the top first, so put that other pillowcase someplace safe. But not TOO safe.
Hokay. So the next step is to make a few snips so your big rectangles resemble a camisole shape, sort of. Like this:

I eyeballed how wide the back piece should be and was off by prolly 4 inches. Because apparently in my head I have a giant Quasimodo hump? Maybe?
The front section will be gathered so it should be about 4/5 inches bigger than you are.
And SEW! Right sides together and whip up yer side seams. You could get all fancypants and french seam them for prettiness sake. Let's pretend I did that, kay?

So now you fold over and hem the raw top bits like this see:

And here lets pretend I folded them twice instead of leaving them raw edged like this. (Man, pinking shears made me lazy. Also, laziness made me lazy).

Ok. Time to do a spot o' gathering. And I'm using the sew-along-some-dental-floss method for this. I can't for the life of me remember where I saw this; but whomever invented it might need to go and collect their Noble Prize for Awesomeness. I've heard Stockholm is lovely this time of year.
Anyway, you sew a wide-ish zigzag along a piece of dental floss then gather it up all super smoothly. Like this see.

Then sew over your gathers to hold them in place.
Should be starting to look like a cami about now.
Time to add some straps. You could use a bit of bias binding, sewn over the gathers then extended to make straps (if you see what I mean).
But I happened to have this crochet trim and a powerful yen to use it. So I made straps like this:

Then stuck some more trim over the gathers and sewed up the bottom hem. An voila. Jammie top.

Now here's where the tute gets REALLY half-assed. There are about a million tutorials on making short out there in the interwebs. my very favourite is this one here by Dana of  MADE. It makes sense and has pretty pictures and everything. My shorts look like a pair of elasticated waist short shorts. Pretty uninspiring, they just happen to be made out of a pillowcase.  And there's not a power in the 'verse could convince me to model them on the intertubes.  But lookit, this is what the jammie top looks like on your's truly

And that's it. I'm going to have Cant Touch This in my head for WEEKS. Awesome.

This is it, for a winner Dance to this and you're gonna get thinner Move, slide your rump Just for a minute let's all do the bump, bump, bump 

Oh, and I shared here:

And at the new link par-tay over at Mine For The Making - DIY Diva Thursdays. You guys! FASHUN diys! I'm all over it like a bad smell!