Little flannel nightgowns

Do you think schoolchildren have watercooler conversations?  I do.  Because frankly, I can't think of any other explanation for it. What, exactly, was wrong with pyjamas?

Well, watercooler. More, you know, climbing around the playground. Comparing snacks at break. "Hey, L," (munch munch gulp). "What do you wear in bed?"

I can't otherwise explain it: the request for nightgowns came out of nowhere. The kind of nowhere that gives one an existential parenting crisis over no longer being your children's whole world and therefore having entirely lost your intimate, authoritative knowledge of what they are probably thinking at any given moment. I only know what they choose to tell me! (I.e. not a lot).

Now, some parents, I'm sure, find this kind of thing distressing.  I, on the other hand, well - I rubbed my hands together in glee and thought - now there's an excellent excuse to purchase cartoon-branded flannel from Plush Addict.  Forgive the sangfroid, but it's not like nobody warned me they'd become people in their own right at some point.

 

So, nightgowns.  The pattern is the Sadie Grace nightgown by SeaminglySmitten, which I got in the Sew Fab pattern bundle (T's has an improvised placket that's not in the pattern). If you didn't see it, this bundle was on offer for one week only in September, and includes a whole ton of kid patterns that separately would cost a lot more. I dithered about buying it for a couple of days, but it included a few patterns that I'd been considering getting anyway, and then my paypal finger slipped and I seemed to have bought it.  I felt momentary impulse-purchase guilt, but now that I've made something from it, and it's something I wouldn't have made otherwise, and that gets massive, enthusiastic use, well. Impulse shopping for the win!

L in particular so likes sleeping in hers that she has already (and rather insistently) requested another one. As the January Kids' Clothes Week starts next Monday, who am I to resist? Also, it's the only way to defuse the insistence :-)  I'm eyeing up some Liberty lawn that's been in my stash for ages and which, I now realise, is unlikely to ever get used for anything more 'deserving'. Besides, what is more deserving than cool cotton nightwear for my firstborn?

I asked them to pose like they were sleeping:

T actually does sleep in positions not unlike that sometimes, but on this occasion they ended up like this:

After 3 nights of bed-sharing, we've now moved both their beds together, like a double, where they can sleep side by side without squashing each other quite so much. This has had the wonderful side effect of putting an immediate stop to T's habit of getting into our bed, as he had done Every. Single. Night for his entire life. So that's a bonus.

With Kids' Clothes Week coming up and an overdue promise to sew more clothes for both of them, I'm looking forward to diving right into the rest of the Sew Fab bundle over the next few days.  Top of my list are these, which would all look great in both boy and girl versions, wouldn't they? :

Clockwise from top left:  bimaa sweater - ethan button-up shirt - best harem pants - reversible zippy hoodie

Currently I have 3 items cut out, 4 more patterns ready to trace, and another 3 on the 'possibly' pile.  Over-ambitious? Quite likely. But I really like ploughing through a big stack of kid stuff - those little pieces are a great antidote to the big makes that adult clothes can turn into. However much of it I actually get done, you can expect to see some more kid sewing this week.

Oh, and some snake print. On my legs. You'll definitely be seeing that by the end of next week - while it's still Jungle January!

Are you kid sewing too this week? What're your plans??  And how do you move between big makes? Do you need little projects to break things up, or you just charge from one ambitious project into the next?

Well for once the sun is shining, so I'm off out. Have a great weekend, fellow sewists!