From T-Shirt to Pants

I love to up-cycle…. refashion…. whatever you want call it.  Taking another piece of clothing and turning it into something new is so exciting to me!  New life, in the fabric form.

That’s exactly how these pants happened.  I came across an ordinary long-sleeved T-shirt at Goodwill, and it screamed “make me into some pants for your boys, please!”  How could I ignore a screaming shirt?

This large shirt was easily turned into a pair of lounge pants for my three-year-old and my nine month old.

I’m such a sucker for stripes on my boys.
If you could see my stash of striped shirts to be up-cycled… yikes.

Here’s a quick mini-tute of how I made the bigger pants:

Remove the sleeves/ribbing around the neck (if you’re using the sleeves like I did, remove them carefully!) – lay the body of the shirt out flat.

Lay a folded pair of pants on top – line  up the bottom hems (this will save mucho work).   You will want the inseam of the pants to be on the edge of the shirt, like mine in the picture.

Now fold the shirt over the pants – this will be one of your pant legs.

After the shirt is folded over, cut the fabric a little bit larger than the pants.  (I put the pants on top of the shirt here, so it’s easy to see where to cut.)  In my case, the old shirt was nearly exactly the right size – I didn’t have much to cut.  But if your child isn’t quite the beanpole that my lovely one is, you’ll have to cut more.

This is what your pant leg will look like:

Fold the pant leg together again, with the right sides together (note: my picture shows it folded with wrong sides together).  Sew down the straight edge of the pant leg (see the picture).  Do NOT sew the above portion together – that is where your pant leg will connect to the other leg.  Repeat with the other leg.

Here is where I (unfortunately!) don’t have any more pictures… so I’ll do my best to explain.  Take your two partially-sewn pant legs (right sides out) and pin them together –

Basically, you’ll pin/sew from a to b on one side, then flip the pant legs over and pin/sew from a to b on the other side.  If you flip a pair of pants inside out, this will help you if you don’t know how to construct a pair of pants.  (Or, if you have a pair of pants that you are willing to deconstruct, do it!)

Then, sew a casing, add some elastic (measure your chid’s waist, and take a little bit off that measurement to see how long your elastic should be), then go find your adorable child to be your model!

The sleeves of this shirt were the perfect size for baby pants…. all I had to do was cut them into the shape of pant legs and just sew them together (the hard to explain a to b part) and add elastic.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

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