Shopping my own home for fabric to make summer pj shorts

One of my daughters's summer pajama shorts are ripped to shreds, literally. The holes appear to be taking up more of the shorts than the actual fabric.

With summer just around the corner, she is desperately needing new pj shorts. Pajama shorts are even quicker to sew than pj pants (yes, Cap't Obvious). They require a little over a yard of fabric and 2 feet of elastic for a women's size small. Even so, when I need some materials for a project, I shop what I have at home, before even setting foot in a store.

Here's a question for you -- what has literally yards of elastic and oodles of soft cottony fabric? I'll give you a hint, it used to be on my bed, and was patched many times.

Yes, that fitted, California King, white cotton sheet is the perfect item for a pair of pajama shorts. (I blogged about patching it here.) Although the body of that sheet was too thin to use, there was more than enough good fabric on the sheet to cut out the fronts and backs of the shorts. The part of the fitted sheet that hugs the sides of the mattress was in excellent condition. And the elastic on that sheet was the kind inside of a casing (not sewn to the edge). A bonus! No need to buy elastic for this project, either! And I have plenty of thread on hand.

I used the pattern that I use for my daughters' and my own pajama pants, only I folded under the legs of the pattern, to make one for shorts. (I had previously made a reduced-size pattern to use for my daughters, who are more petite than me.)

I wanted to add something pretty along the hem. After a thorough search of my trimming's box, I came up with nothing suitable. So, I used a machine edging stitch in lavender thread, making a sweet little scalloped edge to the shorts. Added a little lavender bow at the waistline to mark the front. These shorts were knocked out in about 2 and 1/2 hours on Sunday afternoon. They were free. And they put some fabric with life still in it, to good use.


Shopping my own home for materials and supplies saves me money, of course, but I really love that it gives a purpose to something I might have otherwise discarded.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for May

Tostados on Friday

Friday

Tostados -- home-fried corn tortillas, medley of pinto beans, brown rice and olives in spicy sauce, topped with cheddar, lettuce, shredded carrot and dressing of mayo and homemade salsa
Canned green beans sauteed with oil and salsa
Choice of brownie or pumpkin bread for dessert

Saturday

Scrambled eggs and cheese
Spaghetti noodles in leftover sauce from meatballs last week
Vegetable medley of diced carrots, frozen peas, 1 small potato chopped, butter and onion powder
Brownies/pumpkin bread

Sunday

Pigs in blankets, using marked-down Lil Smokies (99 cents/package) and scratch biscuit dough
Carrot sticks
Dried cranberries
Fresh, steamed asparagus (saved the butt ends for soup)
Brownies

Monday

Meatball-vegetable soup, using lots of scraps from the fridge
Toasted Cheddar cheese sandwiches
Pumpkin bread slices with cream cheese

Tuesday

Leftover soup (minus the meatballs), pureed with the immersion blender, really tasty
Yorkshire pudding
Blackberry-rhubarb-vanilla crisp

Wednesday

Black bean and cheese tacos
Green salad
Roasted carrot sticks
Dried cranberries

Thursday

Easy rice bake
Oven-roasted canned tomatoes
Pumpkin bread
Rhubarb custard pie


It was another hodge-podge week. It seemed like every night I was just throwing stuff together, without any real menu idea. I'm in a bit of a slump with meals, and more into the home decorating thing this week. I suppose that is good in itself. I took care of some challenging, to me, things this week.

On the up-side with regards to cooking, I have a small dinner party coming up in June, and I got that menu planned. My son's girlfriend's parents are coming to dinner (ACK!!). We've never met them, so I'm a bit nervous. Outside of cooking holiday meals, like turkey and ham dinners, I'm not terribly proficient at dinner party cooking. But I came up with a menu, that uses a lot of what we have on hand already, and will hopefully be very delicious. Just curious, if you had to come up with a dinner party menu, using mostly what you have in stock right now, what would you prepare?

I hope you all had a great week. What was on your menu this past week?