PJ Shorts From a Free Pattern

In three to four hours you will have a pair of pull-on pyjama shorts that actually fit, made from a paper pattern you printed at home. This is the project where sewing stops being about joining two rectangles and starts being about following a shape somebody else drafted. PJ shorts are the kindest place to learn that, because the only person who ever sees the inside of the waistband is you.

What you need

Costs below are honest ballparks for buying new. If you already own scissors and an iron, this project can cost you the price of fabric alone.

Cut list

Your pattern supplies the leg shape, so the cut list is short. Print the pattern, check the test square measures what it claims, then read the pieces before you pin anything — how to read a sewing pattern walks through the markings if the lines and notches look like a subway map right now.

• Front leg — cut 2 (mirrored, or 2 on the fold if your pattern says so)
• Back leg — cut 2 (mirrored)
• Elastic — your waist measurement minus 2 inches, cut 1
• Seam allowance — most free PJ patterns use 5/8-inch (1.5 cm). Check your pattern's own note and follow that number everywhere, including the crotch curve
• Waistband casing — folded from the shorts themselves: 1/2-inch turned under, then 1-1/4-inch turned again
• Hem — 1/2-inch turned under, then 1/2-inch again

Cutting the elastic shorter than your waist is deliberate. Elastic that matches your measurement will not hold anything up.

Steps

Cut and mark

1. Press the fabric before you cut. A wrinkle is a shape change, and a shape change at cutting time becomes a fit problem you cannot find later.
2. Lay the fabric folded with the grain straight, selvedges together, and place the pattern pieces with the grainline arrows parallel to the selvedge. Off-grain legs twist around your knees after the first wash — that is where those weirdly spiralling seams on cheap pyjamas come from.
3. Pin, then cut. Long confident strokes, blades resting on the table. Lifting the fabric to cut is what makes wobbly edges.
4. Transfer the notches. Snip a 1/4-inch clip into the seam allowance at each one. These tell you which curve is the front and which is the back, and at 11pm they are the only thing standing between you and a pair of shorts on backwards.

Sew the legs

5. Thread the machine and wind a bobbin. If it has been a while, how to thread a sewing machine is the refresher. Sew a test seam on a scrap first to check tension.
6. Pin one front to one back, right sides together, along the outer side seam. Sew at your pattern's seam allowance. Repeat for the second leg.
7. Sew the inner leg seams on both legs the same way. You now have two tubes.
8. Press every seam open or to one side as you go. Pressing is not tidiness. An unpressed seam sits proud inside the next seam you sew and throws the shape off.

Join the crotch seam

9. Turn one leg right side out and slide it inside the other leg, right sides together, so the two curved crotch edges line up. Match the inner leg seams first and pin outward from there.
10. Sew the curve slowly, stopping with the needle down to pivot. The crotch seam takes the most stress in the whole garment, so sew it a second time about 1/8-inch inside the first line and trim the excess.

Casing and elastic

11. Turn the waist edge under 1/2-inch and press. Turn it again by 1-1/4-inch and press. Pin all the way around.
12. Stitch close to the lower folded edge, leaving a 2-inch gap at the centre back. That gap is the door your elastic goes through.
13. Attach the safety pin to one end of the elastic and feed it through the casing, scrunching and pulling. Pin the free end to the fabric outside the casing so it cannot vanish inside — everybody loses it once.
14. Overlap the ends by 1 inch and sew them together with a rectangle of stitching, or an X inside a box. Let the elastic slip back inside.
15. Close the gap with the same line of stitching you used before.

Hem

16. Turn each leg hem under 1/2-inch, press, turn 1/2-inch again, press, and stitch near the inner fold. The technique is the same one in how to hem trousers — a double fold, so no raw edge shows and the hem has weight to hang straight.
17. Try them on. Press the whole thing. Pressing at the end is the difference between homemade and handmade.

When it goes wonky

Any of these being your outcome is not evidence you cannot sew. Wonky seams are the whole point at this stage; a wearable pair with a crooked hem teaches more than a perfect pair you never started.

What you just learned

• Reading and cutting from a paper pattern — grainlines, notches, seam allowance, and cutting in mirrored pairs. That is the same skill for every garment you will ever make.
• Sewing a curved seam, which behaves nothing like a straight one and shows up in every sleeve, neckline, and pocket from here on.
• Building an elastic casing — the plainest waistband there is, and the one behind most skirts, joggers, and pull-on trousers.
• Pressing as construction, not as finishing.

The natural next step is the PJ trousers project in the library — same pattern logic, longer legs, and a chance to get the crotch curve right the second time. If you would rather consolidate first, the Stitcher level page lists everything at this stage, and Maker is where the pattern pieces start getting interesting.