Recycled Pants
April 22, 2010 8:05 am Gillian Crafts, Kid's Crafts, Projects, Sewing
By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.
My three year old is a skirt girl. She ones exactly one pair of jeans which she will only condescend to wear if it is very very cold and her brother asks her very very nicely (forget it if I ask!) She will, when the mood strikes her, wear yoga pants, generally with a skirt over the top, but at least they are pants, which between our cold winters and buggy summers, are just a necessity some of the time. The problem is that they rarely fit her. She’s long and thin (I know, boo hoo,poor her, tall and skinny, and with long eyelashes to boot!) and even fitted cotton pants like yoga pants are generally long enough and too big, or they fit at the waist but are too short.
Last week I was cleaning out her winter clothes when I came across a pair of pants that have been hanging around for a good year and a half. They finally, finally stay on her waist but are way too short. And not even “cute capri” short. No, these are more like “My mom can’t bother to find clothes that fit me” short. But it’s April and I’m in the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mood, so instead of sending them on to Goodwill (well, not yet, I’m sure in another year they’ll still end up there, as all our outgrown clothes do). I decided to give them a little more life and lengthen them with loops of ribbon. She was so excited she could barely wait for me to clip the threads when it came off the sewing machine and I have to say that I’m a little in love with them too, in fact, I might have to go through the Goodwill hamper and search out some more too-short pants and make a few more pairs!
To make these cute, loopy pants you’ll need:
One pair of too short yoga pants
Ribbon, any width works, I used a combination of three widths that I had in my stash which kind of matched each other
Sewing Machine and coordinating thread
Remove the front piece of your machine so that you have a narrower surface to work with. This way the cuff of the pants easily goes around and you wont accidentally sew the leg hole closed (it happens!)
Cut the ribbon into equal lengths, I found that 7 inch long pieces were ideal, but it will depend on the height of your child and the look you want. You’ll need enough pieces to evenly go around each cuff.
Pinning (or eyeballing) the ends of the loops along the underside of the cuff, stitch around the bottom of each pant leg until the ribbon loops go all the way around.
For fun, I also replaced the faux drawstring with matching ribbon by snipping the old one out and rethreading a new one in place. And since I still had ribbon left over and we can never have two many hairclips in our house, I used the extra to make a few bows as well.
She’s been running around ever since I pulled them on, leaping and laughing at her new (old) and much more girl approved pants. And mom is happy to not have to buy an new pair for the summer. Rock on recycling!
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Sandra :
Date: April 27, 2010 @ 1:05 PM
How do you make your hair bows?
The pants are great and I was thinking about making something like this for this 40 yr old woman.
Gillian :
Date: June 1, 2010 @ 6:32 AM
Sandra, I make bows a number of ways, these were a simple loop of ribbon secured in the center with a thinner ribbon that I hot glued after wrapping it around a few times. I then slipped an clip (the kind hairdressers use) under the loop and hot glued it into place!