Tilly and the Buttons: Margot Pajama Pants Review
Margot Pajama Pants
Pattern Review!
Hi everyone! Today I’ll be talking about the Margot Pajama Pants pattern from Love at First Stitch by Tilly Walnes of Tilly and the Buttons. This won’t be a review of the whole book, as I’m not finished with it yet, but so far I’m enjoying it!
The Margot Pajama Pants pattern is the second pattern in the book and first whole garment (the first pattern makes a cute little scarf).
I’ll say I think I’m very, very much a beginner and the lessons included with the Margot pattern are easy to follow. If you’re an absolute beginner, I would definitely recommend you also read your sewing machine’s manual, to help you figure out all your controls.
The pattern was easy to make! The only part I got stopped up at was tracing the pattern. The pattern is double sided and meant to result in two pajama leg pattern pieces, the front of the leg and the back of the leg. The pattern has two mismatched (back leg button and front leg top are on the same page) halves per side. If you cleverly fold and mark your tracing paper, you can get both halves of a leg on the same sheet of paper.
This isn’t clearly called out in the book, so I ended up cutting each side of the pattern out as a different piece of paper and had to tape my pattern back together when it came time to trace it onto my fabric. Not a big deal, but as someone who is easily frustrated, I can see this being even more frustrating for someone with even less experience than me.
The sizing ended up being a bit off for me, but I blame that on myself. I didn’t look properly at the difference between the garment size and the body size charts. My body size chart placed me between sizes 7 and 8, and I chose size 8 without looking at the finished garment sizes. I probably would have fit into a 7 just fine, but instead my size 8 is just a bit loose. Super comfy, though!
The pants are held up on the waist by either a drawstring you sew yourself or a 3/8th inch ribbon. I used a 3/8th inch velvet ribbon and found it to dig a bit into my skin, and would recommend using a wider ribbon or sewing your own drawstring (I imagine it would be softer)/
The fabric I used was Viscose Linen Noil in Baked Clay from Blackbird Fabrics. The fabric is super soft and comfortable, but was a bit stretchier and drapier than I think I was meant to use. I’m now working on the next pattern in the book with a much stiffer fabric and having a much easier time—not that the Viscose Linen Noil was so difficult to use, it just provided a bit more of a challenge than I needed.
That being said, the fabric is an absolutely gorgeous color and incredibly comfortable to wear. I ended up having to redo the entire waistband seam and the fabric didn’t seem any worse for the wear. The fabric is sold out on Blackbird Fabrics website but I highly recommend it if you have a pair of loose comfy shorts or a nice loose top (I’m thinking the Sagebrush from Friday Pattern Co would look so cute!) in your future.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this pattern for a new sewist, and encourage them to have Google on hand if they way something is explained in the book doesn’t work for them. So far, I’ve had mostly good luck with the explanations! And I would recommend using a patterned fabric or at least one with a clear right and wrong side - I definitely struggled with that using a solid fabric!
Have you tried making Margot Pajama Pants? What did you think? Do you have any recommendations for a super new sewist? Thank you!
