Background

Ottobre 4/2023 #3 is an infant/toddler pajama with a front placket with snap fasteners, raglan sleeves, patch pockets at the hips, and snaps fasteners at the inside leg.

What attracted me to this pattern was that it doesn’t have feet, and he doesn’t need rib knit for the sleeve and leg cuffs. I feel like footie pajamas have a very narrow window of fitting well, either they are too long and their feet get “lost” or they’re too short and squish their toes. For this reason I prefer dressing him in regular leg pajamas with socks.

I also liked the placket at the front neckline. Most of my son’s pajamas have the “envelope” style neck and while it is convenient, I find it tugs down when he plays on the floor and it always requires some fussing in order to get it to lay straight at the shoulders. The other nice thing about a front placket is you can use a scrap of woven fabric for a bit of contrast. It gives it a slightly more formal look than the envelope neckline.

Materials

For the main fabric I used a heather gray rayon/lycra thermal knit from Fabric Mart. Due to the rayon content it has a nice drape and slightly silky texture. I did find it was a much lighter color than depicted in the photo though.

I thought it would be cute to match his dad’s pajama pants, so I used a bit of cotton flannel for the neck placket.

You’ll need a total of 11 snaps to complete this garment. I didn’t have quite enough red snaps in one size so I mixed and matched a bit. For the front neck placket snaps I used red size 16 open snaps purchased years ago from the now defunct Snap Source. For the inside legs I used size 15 red Snap Source open snaps. While I dislike the Snap Source setting tool (I find it cumbersome and prone to shifting when layering the various pieces) I love how sturdy the snaps themselves are. I’ve bought some other size 15 and 16 snaps on Amazon and they just don’t have the same robust feeling.

I interfaced the front placket, front inside leg facing, and back leg snap band with Pro-Sheer Elegance from Fashion Sewing Supply (possibly defunct as well by now). I didn’t interface the front neck placket because the flannel was sturdy enough to stand on its own.

Size and Fit

I cut a size 80 for my son. He’s currently about 30” long and weighs a little over 23 pounds. I found this overall a bit big (it is meant for a child about 1.5″ taller than my son) but I also want to get as much use out of it as possible! The longer length doesn’t seem to bother him one bit.

I found the fit in the body was a bit loose but not overly so. I much prefer this more relaxed fit to the skintight American 9+ month cotton pajamas, which is the biggest reason why I’m sewing instead of buying them. My son has a rather wiry build and even on him some of those pajamas are like sausage casings. I’m not sure what people with chunkier babies do. I guess you can buy looser fitting ones but they seem to be available only in synthetic fibers.

Construction

The instructions were the usual minimal, text only Ottobre instructions.

I skipped the pockets. They didn’t seem necessary since I wasn’t using a plaid or stripe print fabric.

I found a really helpful guide for making the front neck placket on the Ottobre Lab section of their website. I’m not sure why but my placket piece was about 3/8” too short. Fortunately it was easy enough to recut from a scrap with another 3/8” added to the length.

Ottobre marks the placement of the neck placket snaps, but not the snaps at the inside leg. The only guidance is to place the middle two snaps each 2-3cm from the center front. I ended up placing the middle of the first snap at the leg hem about 1/2” from the bottom, and the next two snaps about 2 7/8” apart. This is less snaps and further apart than his RTW pajamas. I have mixed feelings about this, in some ways I actually prefer this as it still stays together and it’s less to deal with when he’s wiggling and fighting me diaper changes. But they do seem pretty far apart. I think 10 snaps would have made more sense for size 80. The Snap Source snaps come in packets of 10 and I had accidentally botched a couple of snaps during setting so even if I wanted to do 10 snaps I was limited to just 8. (A not inconsiderable amount of the time spent on constructing this garment was dedicated to setting snaps.).

Rather than try to sew tiny sleeve and leg hems in the round, Ottobre has you sew the hem, sew the seam, then use a straight stitch or bartack to secure the seam allowance at the hem edge. I much prefer this method.

Conclusion

I’m definitely making this again. As soon as I put it on him he wanted to nurse and then fell asleep for his nap shortly after – I consider that a sign of approval!