the drawbacks of being tall

I'm just over 6 feet tall. It's mostly good; however, there are drawbacks. For example, someone once called out to me while I was running through the airport, "Do you play basketball?" It still blows my mind how some people think this sort of behavior is socially acceptable. The other main drawback is pants. Starting in the 10th grade, I had to buy pants at The Tall Girl Store (now Long Tall Sally). Luckily, now there are many more stores that make extra long pants (Gap, Old Navy, J C Penney, Buckle), though you can generally only buy them online, not in real stores. However, I still have trouble with pajama pants. Many places that carry extra long jeans and dress pants don't carry extra long pajama pants. If they do, they're either just barely long enough and then shrink in the wash or $50+ or both. The two pairs that I have are actually sweat pants; one pair is really old from The Tall Girl Store, and the other pair is men's pants from Old Navy. Both of these are too warm to wear in the summer. I have some capri pajama pants, but sometimes, I really want light-weight long pants. So I decided to try an experiment.

I went to Target and bought two pairs of the same pajama pants. Now, ordinary pajama pants are 4+ inches too short for me, which, as you can see from the picture below, is too long for capris and so just the right length to look goofy.

The plan was to cut off one pair to make them capri pants, and then add on that cut off part to the other pair to make them extra long. I took a pair of my existing capri pajama pants to measure the length for the capri pair. 

I added on another inch for the hem and cut them off there. Then I pinned, ironed, and hemmed them up. This was the easy pair.

Next, I pulled out the hem of the long pair. In retrospect, this was probably unnecessary, as I ended up folding the hem back up anyway. Then I turned the leftover pieces from the capri pair inside out, ironed a 0.5-inch hem in the top of them, and turned them back right-side out. This next part is very important. Turn the pants inside out and the leftover pieces right-side out. Then I fit the pieces inside the pants, meeting up the original hem of the pants with the new hem of the pieces (not the manufactured hem, that's further inside the pant leg). I pinned and sewed them together. Then I pulled the pieces out, now attached to the bottom of the pants. Since they were put in right-side out, when you pull them out after sewing, they're now inside out, same as the pants. 

Then I ironed the sewed-together part and turned the pants right-side out. And now I have super long pajama pants!

The primary problem I had was the pattern. If I were to do this again, I would probably try for solid-colored pants, but these were the only ones that Target had two pairs of in my size. I tried to match the pattern up, but to no avail. But, they're pajama pants, so I decided I don't really care, and most people are probably not looking that closely anyway. I'm very excited to try out my new pants. Even though it's not quite 4pm, if it weren't 78 degrees F in my house, I'd be wearing them right now!