Refashioning Pants into Maternity Shorts Part II

Are you still with me on the maternity shorts project? Hopefully you've gotten the pants you intend to repurpose all ripped apart and traced and cut a pattern of your existing shorts using my maternity shorts tutorial from yesterday.

Next, pin the pieces with right sides together, lining up the front and back crotches. You'll sew just the front and back crotch at this point. Do NOT sew down further than the curve:

Here's the back crotch curve:

After you've gotten the front and back crotch pieces sewn together, open up the pants. You'll line up the leg inseams to prepare to sew those seams next.

At this point, I measured both the inseam and outseam of the original shorts to compare and make sure I was on target to have the hem straight across. I also tried them on to make sure they fit (they won't stay up yet, we haven't added the waistband).

Measuring the outseam:

For the waistband, you'll need some stretchy jersey fabric. Cut it so it is 14" high in the non-stretchy direction and then in the stretchy direction, cut it so that the diameter goes around your waist minus 4". I cut my stretchy fabric into 2 pieces.

Pin the 14" edges.

Sew the two pieces into a tube and then fold the tube in half with wrong sides together.

With the shorts inside out, insert the tube into the waistband of the shorts. The finished edge will be facing down.

Pin the tube in place. Note that prior to pinning, fold the tube into quarters and mark the middle of the front and back. You'll want to match the side seams up with the short's side seams and the middle of the front and back up with the short's front and back middle seams. You will likely have to stretch the tube between these points. Use a stretch stitch and a jersey needle.

Zig zag the raw edges (I feel this is optional...)

You're going to hem the bottom of the short's legs. Turn the raw edges under 1/2" and press. Turn under again and press. I did a double row of stitching around the short's legs for a more 'store bought' look.

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. Free is a good price for maternity clothing!

Refashioning Pants into Maternity Shorts Part I

I seem to have reached a wardrobe crisis. I need summer maternity clothing to wear.

The past few days, I have been obsessively making maternity clothing for myself. I was given a box of maternity things and most are too big and too short for me. So I'm refashioning some of the items into things I can wear this summer.

For example, I attacked these pants:

And turned them into these:

They were several sizes too large (even being 27 weeks pregnant...) so I couldn't just cut them off and add a stretchy waist. What I did was trace a pair of my shorts that do fit and make a pattern. Then I completely dismantled the pants and used the pattern from my own shorts to cut out the new shorts, which is the part of the tutorial I'm going to show today. I'll show the sewing directions tomorrow.

Turn the pants inside out so you can see all the seams. The goal is to rip out the crotch seams and inseam, but not the outseam (if that's a technical term!) By 'outseam', I mean the seam running down the outside of the pant leg.

Rip out the seams at the crotch:

You'll also need to rip out the zipper. (Save it--I have some other projects in mind to try repurposing the zippers I've harvested from several pairs of pants.)

You may also have to remove the waistband binding. It will depend on your pattern and how high up you want the rise of your shorts to go.

Here is my pattern all laid out on the pants. Note that the front and back pieces should be different. The back rise is slightly higher than the front and the crotch portions are different. The goal is to lay out the pattern on top of the pants so that the old 'outseam' is now the pair of short's new outseam. You'll want to lay out the back pattern piece on the back of the pants so you can reuse the pockets and vice versa with the front pattern piece.

When cutting, be sure to add a seam allowance if you didn't add one when making the pattern of your shorts.

After you use the pattern to cut out one set of front and back pieces, lay the cut piece over the remaining pant leg. Use it as the pattern.

Measure the inseam you want your shorts to have, add 2" for hemming, and cut off the bottom part of the pant legs. Save them, I have another project in mind!

Tomorrow, I'll show you how to sew the shorts and add a stretchy waistband. I had too many pictures to show in one post!

Bunny Family Addition

Before we had our first child, I was on a sewing rampage. I made both baby girl and boy blankets, burp cloths...and bunnies. I made a bunny family (one pink bunny, a blue bunny, and a green bunny). Since we're having a new baby, I had to make the baby a bunny. I made it entirely from scraps. I even used more of that towel I keep talking about!

The rest of the bunny family is in storage while our house is being built (and it's coming along well!) here's a picture:

And here is the bunny family picture from two years ago:

I made all of these bunnies using this tutorial.

Coming Soon: Raglan T-Shirt Pattern

I've gotten a few requests for the tutorial I used to make these raglan t-shirts. Here's another example of one I've made since then using the pattern I drafted:

I've even branched out and added a hood and a front kangaroo pocket. Plus long sleeves.

My little guy isn't too fond of wearing hoods indoors.

But he does like his one-of-a-kind shirts.

Why am I boring you with all this? I've spent LOADS of time tweaking this pattern and decided that I'm going to sell the pattern on etsy and ebay so you can make your own crew neck long or short sleeved shirts. I'm going to include the hood and pocket options, too!

The pattern's cost will include over 20 pages of instructions and pictures to make sewing the shirts easier. However, the cost will not include the rights to sell the pattern or finished shirts yourselves. The pattern is only going to be available in a size 3T for now. I'll see how it goes and if it is worth my time to draft other sizes, I'll start working on them.

I'll let you know when it's available!

I just wanted to give you an idea of what I'm working on this week.

Repurposed Flower Headband Tutorial

Do you want to make a flower headband from a t-shirt like I made here?

Start with two skinny rectangles 2" x 17" of t-shirt fabric. You'll need 4" of elastic.

Also, you'll need 8 small circles and 10 larger circles (we're going to be using the same tactic found here for the flowers).

Sew the two long rectangles with right sides together at the long sides to make a skinny tube. Turn the tube to right sides out with a safety pin.

Press the tube flat.

Add your 4" piece of elastic to the ends. As you add it, turn the raw edges under and pin in place.

Stitch the elastic securely into place.

Now you can make the flowers (using this tutorial) and then stitch them to the headband. I added them close together because they spread out a little bit when you wear the headband.