Crafty Pants

I’ve had the idea to start a crafting group/collective of some type for awhile now.  I am a part of a diverse, talented, thoughtful and oh-so-very wonderful group of mamas here in Napa.  Outside of the commonality we share in motherhood, our interests overlap and intersect on many different levels.  We are quite an amazing group of women (if I do say so myself)! The support and friendship we lend to each other is immeasurable and I’m so grateful to be a part of it. Over the weekend I had the pleasure of having a few of these special ladies over for some sewing and laughs…and a bit of wine and nibbles of course.  Since we all have little ones around the same age, we decided to make re-purposed toddler pants out of old t-shirts and sweaters.I ended up making two pairs of pants for Calvin out of one of Michael’s discarded long-sleeved t-shirts.  In the pair shown above, I used the sleeves to make him a little pair of leggings.  I had to add some extra material to the top to get the length right, but I like the contrast between the lime green and the bright blue. Then, I made the second pair from the body of the shirt. Again, I added a contrasting colored yoke to the top of the pants and repeated the same color on the seat. I trimmed the bottoms with red bias tape and repeated the red throughout the top with red seams. Once those two were finished, I was on a roll and cut out a few other pairs to sew at some point…hopefully this week.  I pulled out a pair of pants that I had made for Levi when he was 3, thinking they might fit Calvin, but they were too bulky.  I made these out of a cute little pair of red striped capris that I wore back in my “skinny days” (aka before children). Instead of putting them back in the box, I decided to just take them in a bit and shorten them slightly so that they would fit him now and throughout the summer. There is still plenty of room for him to grow into.  Besides that, the blue and red pants are too big on him anyways and probably won’t fit him until later in the year.  That’s what I get for not following a pattern I guess.If you are looking for tutorials on how to make these pants, you’ve come to the wrong blog…I’d be a horrible tutorialist.  I make too many mistakes as I go and it seems like every pair comes out differently, but somehow it all ends up fine in the end!  When I first learned how to make t-shirt pants, I followed a simple pattern from Amanda Soule’s book, The Creative Family.  Online you can find a ton of different tutorials, but here is a good one to get you started: How to make easy kids pants | Handy Home Projects.  I like that she shows you how to embellish the pants, as well.

Have a great week, everyone!

(BTW…the banner that says, “Crafty Mama Collective” was brought by one of my friends who was a part of a group of sewing mamas that split up a few years ago.  I say it’s time to give that banner some new life!)