No Boddah Dah Hawaiian Dude

My Dad has to be, without a doubt the hardest person to get gifts for (closely tied with my sister Lynn).  This last Christmas, however, was a definite success in the gift-giving department.

I made him a custom designed work outfit, meaning pajamas, since Dad does a lot of work at home for a company I call the CCC (Commando Consulting Company; I have a vague idea that they do stuff in Afghanistan and Iraq that involves security consulting.)

For the shirt, I used this tutorial here and a design I came up with myself and applied it using freezer paper and fabric paint.

It was surprisingly easy! 

To give the design some texture, I did the circle and circular words in fabric paint, and the diagonal word "Boddah" I cut out of felt fabric and sewed onto the shirt with my sewing machine.  It's hard to see, but the words "NO" and "ME" are painted on with a very light powder blue color, not white.

 

(In case you haven't figured it out yet, "Boddah" is Hawaiian slang for "Bother")

This is the back of the shirt, also done with the thematic colors of brown and powder blue.

 

To complete the pajamas, I made regular pajama pants.  I had assumed that the shirt would be the hardest part of my gift idea, but it was the pants that were the most annoying to make.  I searched for hours and couldn't find any flannel fabric in any sort of aloha print that wasn't either girly or for babies. 

 

In the end I had to go with aloha print cotton fabric and line the inside with flannel, which essentially meant that I had to sew two pairs of pants and then hem them together and join them at the waist.

I don't know if it turned out quite as well as I'd hoped (they are a little warm for Sunny South weather, even for a Hawaiian), but they were the best I could manage given the circumstances.

All in all I think it was a rousing success!