Christmas snowman nightie!

I'm not too hot on sewing clothes - but I got some bargain stretch knit fabric from the charity shop and was inspired to try a Christmas nightie for one of my girls!

Here it is:

Luckily I have 2 daughters of different sizes because I managed to cut the fabric with the stretch lengthwise instead of sideways so it turned out too small for my eldest!  OOppss!!

Thankfully it fits my younger daughter perfectly!!

And here's how I made it:

I just took a nightie that already fitted and used it to draw around - folded in half on the fabric also folded in half, then cut around it allowing for seams and the hem turning.

Then I did the same for the back piece:

I also cut strips about 4cm (1.5") wide to use for binding around the top of the nightie and for the straps - just again the same length as the original nightie:

For the snowman on the front - I used a scrap of white fleece - roughly cut into the shape of a snowman's head and body.  And I used small scraps which already had fusible webbing ironed on one side -

(left over scraps from previous applique projects)

 for the hat, nose, scarf, eyes, buttons and arms.

Then I pinned the fleece in place and stitched around it using the applique setting on my machine (you could just use a tight zig-zag)

I then ironed on the remaining features and stitched around them too:

I then pinned and stitched the front and back pieces right sides together:

Then double turned and stitched the bottom hem:

Finally I added the binding to the top - folding the long strips it in on themselves twice to hide the raw edges and slipped the top edge of the nightie in the middle of the double fold, Pinned then stitched:

I trimmed the edges - and again checked the length of the straps against the original nightie.

Done!

Fantastic pose from my daughter there!!

For the downloadable PDF version of this tutorial, click here.

And my lesson learned for the day - check the way the fabric stretches before cutting!!!!

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