Sleep Sack for a Toddler

I have a monkey for a 21 month old. She is all arms and legs and climbs everything, including her crib.

She also FREEZES at night. I've never met anyone quite so cold blooded, and I have a hard time believing she is related to me, who likes the thermostat set to about ice box or below. (In the below pic she's helping me create a pattern for her new sack.  We were using her old sleep sack as a template to create the new one.)

Now, I'm not quite ready to move her to a big girl bed, because, well, she's also uber-curious, and I can only imagine what she'll get into if left to her own devices in her room.  (just look at those deceptively quiet deep brown eyes.)

So we solved the climbing problem AND the freezing problem by putting her in a sleep sack. Can't get a leg up when they're tucked inside a sack. But Little Miss Long Legs is too long for her sack. And apparently the baby clothes making companies don't think anyone over the age of 9 months need these.

To solve the problem, I made her a big(ger) kid sleep sack.  This is the last of the material from these covers which used to be stocked in my shop.  I had just enough material to make sure the fabric pattern centered nicely on the front and the back, but not enough material to allow extra room in the fabric pattern to meet perfectly across the zipper.

Because I had limited amounts of material, I couldn't get as much of an a-line cut on the front pieces.  That meant I needed to put a little box pleat in the back piece when I sewed them together.  Had I been thinking (instead of trying to sew this in time for her nap while she and her brother jumped around the room like wild monkeys, tossing new Christmas toys willy nilly and in general causing mayhem of one type and another), I would have not made it an inverted box pleat, as it would look prettier on the outside.  But this job was rushed so that it could be used at nap time.

Also, I didn't get the light pink bias tape cut for the right armhole.  But maybe before bedtime :)

I did take pictures along the way, so I'm thinking I can put this up as an easy peasy tutorial, too.