Pajamas from t-shirts reusing collar and hems

I just love little kid pajamas, don't you? And I just love refashioning t-shirts. They're so versatile and soft and we all have a gazillion old ones hanging around. That's why I chose Serger Pepper's tutorial to make pajamas from t-shirts for a blogger tutorial swap recently. This particular tutorial has a little bit of extra genius in it... you use the original neckline and bottom hem of the t-shirts so that you save time and energy making it!

I started off with these two t-shirts. The red one has 5% spandex content, which is perfect for stretchy cuffs (what I did for my boy's underwear from t-shirts) and the neck was a good fit for my little boy. The blue one was absolutely huge, but had some stains and ruined hems.

I drew up my own sketch of how I wanted to break up the top so as to be able to use both original hem and collar. In the original tutorial, the collar is from one shirt and the hem from the other. I didn't want to use either collar or hem from the blue shirt and I wanted a simple and masculine look, so I decided to break up the main color with a contrasting stripe. I used the 5% spandex shirt for the ankle and wrist cuffs as well as a waistband so as to avoid making a casing for elastic.

Alas, there was not enough fabric for the waistband, so I had to do the casing after all. But I just love the overall effect.

I saved lots of time by not having to worry about finishing off a neckline...

... or a bottom hem.

And I personally prefer sewing cuffs on to hemming, so this project was basically only the fun parts of putting together a garment! For more details on this project, check out this post on my blog, Cucicucicoo!