Kimono Robe/Nursing Robe

Several months ago, I attended a baby shower for a girl in our ward. Someone gave her a present instead of something for the baby. It was a set of pjs. The bottoms were capris and the top was a short sleeved button down style just prefect for nursing a baby during the night with little hassle (or so the idea seems). I was struck with the brilliance of the idea especially since I never really dealt with night time nursing. Ok, I didn't really deal with nursing at all.

However, since I will be trying the whole nursing thing again, I wanted to have some 'luxury' items to try and not make the whole ordeal as stressful. One of those was something to wear that would be more convenient to nursing. I had no nursing tops and found it cumbersome to try and hold Russell without having my still baggy shirts falling down in his face the whole time. Those pjs turned a light on in my mind.

Now, I was going to be lazy and just buy some, or hope that the same person would give me some at the baby shower they are having next week, but I realized several things. 1) Pjs are stinkin' expensive especially since my normal pjs consist of a random pair of shorts (or gifted pj pants in the winter) and a random t-shirt from my closet. 2) The person who gave the pjs was asking me if we had any of the real hooded towels (not the little kind of flimsy ones) so that is probably what I'll be getting. 3) How can I be sure they would even be comfortable and not too hot for the next summer months with bad air conditioning in our apartment?

So I've been looking around and found this tutorial for a Kimono style robe. It looked easy enough to sew and like it would fit the bill. After reading through it a couple more times and taking some quick measurements on myself, I decided I would make it a little smaller and a little shorter. My fabric worked better that way, plus it left me enough to make a quicky pair of matching pj shorts (still to be started and hopefully it will actually get done before a baby magically decides it is time to come).

I used some knit fabric I got earlier this year when the Mills End fabric store was closing and some satin blanket binding I bought for another project in which the greens looked horrible together and thus did not use. I only ended up using one yard of the fabric for the whole thing including the belt and belt loops. I'm pretty excited with the way it turned out. It is super comfortable, too! I made the whole thing today in 3 hours. The hardest part by far was getting that dumb blanket binding on. I don't know why I ever choose to use it because it usually gives me a big headache and always is the longest part of every project I use it on. I didn't want to just fold over and hem every edge either, so I gave in a used the binding.

I'll try and get the shorts finished up soon so you can see the final project all finished up and looking awesome together.