Sunday, September 20, 2009

flame retardant fabric?

I decided to make my nephew some flannel pajama pants. When I mentioned this to my mother, she asked me to make sure the flannel was flame retardant. I thought that was strange, since I couldn't imagine why his pajamas, as opposed to his daytime clothes, would need special chemicals to make them less likely to burst into flames. I didn't think much of it as I headed to the fabric store. I figured, if it was so important, then I might as well abide by her wishes (and the law, apparently).

I shop at that big box fabric store. It's close to my house, has good prices and sales, and an amazing variety of fabrics and notions. I started browsing the huge aisle of "snuggle flannel" looking at all the cute patterns. I looked up and noticed that it was all on sale. Then I noticed the disclaimer on the sale sign: "not intended for children's sleepwear." Hmm... interesting. What else would you use such child-appropriate flannel fabric for if not for sleepwear? So I started looking for the aisle of sleepwear appropriate flannel fabric. I found all of five bolts of the special flame retardant fabrics. And they were about $10 more per yard. Huh? Something seemed wrong. So, I figured I'd get some flame retardant fabric and some of that "snuggle flannel" and figure it out at home. I found a cute pattern in the small selection of flame retardant flannel and bought a yard.

From sewing projects


Once at home I did some online research and found out that certain chemicals previously used to treat flame retardant fabric have been outlawed due to their harmful effects - mainly reproductive, neurological and liver-related. Yikes! The purpose behind the flame retardant fabric is to prevent children's bedtime clothing from catching fire. Apparently children are more likely to encounter fire sources in the early morning and in the evening (from stoves and the like). This made much more sense than worrying that your child's bed will catch on fire. Still, "better" fabric is no substitute for good parenting.

After finishing two pairs of pajama pants in the "snuggle" flannel, I decided to do something a little different with the third pair. I bought some ribbon to coordinate with each flannel print. On the first two pairs I added the ribbon to the pant legs. That was cute, but like I said I wanted to try something different this time. So I decided to make a small pocket to add to the pants. I'm not sure if my method is the best method, but here's what I did. First, I cut a 4" x 4" piece of fabric, centered on one of the jungle animals. I chose the hippo because it's just gosh darn cute.

From sewing projects


From sewing projects


Then I used a little bit of stitch witchery to hold the ribbon in place while I sewed (I used this same technique with the other two pairs of pants).

From sewing projects


I folded the fabric down so that the ribbon would be the top of the pocket, and sewed it in place.

From sewing projects


From sewing projects


I also sewed the bottom, framing the hippo print.

From sewing projects


Then I sewed the sides in place and trimmed all the extra fabric.

From sewing projects


That's it for now. I'll post pictures of the finished pants later.

I would like to add that I noticed a strange and unpleasant smell when I ironed the flame retardant fabric. I also noticed that the fabric feels different, and I had a few problems sewing the fabric with my machine (which in all fairness could have been my machine -- it's very old, and I'm still figuring out how to best use it). I will definitely not buy any more in the future, but I feel it would be wasteful to not use the fabric that I already bought.



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