Ok so my granddaughter is almost 6. But she is skinny as a rail fence and all legs. Now finding pants on the ready to wear rack for this child is nothing if its not frustrating. And finding sewing patterns can be equally frustrating. She loves loves leggins but if they fit in the waist they are too short. Well when school started she wanted some leggins, being a good Grammie I bought her some and sure enough one trip through the dryer and they were 4 inches shorter than her legs. But they still fit perfectly every other way. So I brought a pair home, her birthday is coming up and I figured I could rescue the the remaining parts of the outfits by making new leggins that were long enough.
Well I did but in the process it got me to thinking, I know other parents and grandparents might just want to know how this is done. So here it is, step by step. For this example I chose a pair of ready to wear pants in a six month size but the concepts will be the same with any child or adults pants.
Materials needed:
Paper longer than the pants by 2 1/2″
marker
RTW (ready to wear) pants
Ruler
Steps to create pants pattern:
- 1. Turn your ready to wear pants inside out, next insert your hand into the bottom of one leg, follow the leg thru the crouch and down the opposite leg, grasp the hem and pull back into the first leg. This will fold your pants neatly as show below.
- 2. Align your center seams and stretch out the elastic, measure to find the stretch width of each side of the pants. For these pants the measurement is 12 inches.
- 3. Measure from the top of the waist band to the bottom of hem of the pants, and add 2 1/2”. Cut your paper to that length. Christmas wrapping paper works really well for this project. With your ruler, draw a straight line at the edge of the paper that runs the lenth of the pants.
- 4. Using the measurement you got by stretching the waist of the pants, divide it by 2 then add 1/2″ and measure from the line you just drew and mark for the center front and back seams of your pants. in this case I am measuring over 6 1/2″.
- 5. Lay the folded pants onto the paper. Allow 1 1/4″ from the top of the paper to the waist band and a generous 1/4″ on the long side of the pants, the paper should be about 1 1/4″ longer than your pants.
you can see that the waist on the pattern is larger than the waist on the ready to wear pants - 6. Place a mark in the hem area of the pants, where the inseam (inner leg seam) starts.
- 7. Trace a general shape of the center seams, place a mark on the pattern paper at the top of the leg.
- 8. Extend the inner leg seam of the pants by 1/2″ and mark. I used a see threw ruler allowing me to place the 1/2″ mark on the pants seam.
- 9. Complete the center seam, and hem line if needed. Your general pattern shape should be something like this.
- 10. Cut out of paper 2 of this shape.
- 11. Pants fronts are slightly narrower than the pants backs, you can see that there is about 1/2″ difference in this pair. So using one of you paper pieces you need to mark at the top (waist band area) 1/4″ from the center front seam. We will taper this line to nothing where the crouch curves. Now Trim on the line.
- 12. Align the lone edges of the pattern pieces and tape them together to form one pattern piece. It will look like this one.
- 13. pin pattern piece to fashion fabric and cut 2 pants pieces.
- 14. To assemble pants align the inner seam of each pant leg and stitch with 1/4″ seam allowance on inner leg seam.
- 15. Turn one of the legs right side out and side it into other leg. Align inner leg seams.
- 16. Pin center front/back seam and stitch with 1/4″ seam allowance.
- 17. Turn under 1 1/4″ for waist and hem and stitch in place. Leave a 1 inch opening in waist to thread elastic through.
Congratulations on a job well done! With practice nobody will be able to tell which pants are purchased and which ones are copied!
