With a house already full of boys, I haven’t had the need to buy much of anything for this new babe. I did want to make a few things for baby, however, and one of my favorite things to make is baby pants. Okay, pants in general are a fave, I’ll admit, but especially baby pants. Everything is much better in miniature version.
There are two things that I really love about sewing knit baby pants: they are a super quick sew and they take very little fabric.
Don’t have a baby to sew for? This tutorial is basically an updated version of my lounge pants, so you could easily make these for any sized kid.
If you know my crazy love for upcycling, you have to know that I adore using thrifted T-Shirts for baby pants. Not only does it make these even that much faster to make, it also gives you so many great fabric options. [the two pants on the right were both upcycled from thrifted tees!] And obviously, stripes are always a good choice…
1. Lay a pair of baby pants on top of your fabric/thrifted tee. You want to line up the outside seam of your pants with the folded edge of your fabric. Cut around the pants, giving yourself a little extra fabric around the side for a seam allowance. [for baby pants made out of knit, I make the front and back the same, but you can always make the back a little higher if you need some room in the booty]
Be sure also that you add some extra length at the top for the waistband. How much will depend on how wide your elastic is. I prefer to use fold over elastic like this:
for baby pants, since it’s soft and won’t dig into baby’s skin at all.
2. Sew down the inseam of each leg, with the right sides of the fabric together.
4. Turn the pant legs right side out. Pin the legs together at the center seam and sew.
5. Sew the ends of your elastic together. My elastic was about 14in. long, allowing room for overlap as the ends were sewn together. I don’t want my pants to be too tight, and I cloth diaper my babes, so I don’t need the pants to be super skinny. And my babies tend to be well over eight pounds. If yours are smaller, you might want to use less elastic.
6. Fold the top of the waistband over the circle of elastic and pin in place.
7. Sew the waistband down, being careful not to sew the elastic at the same time.And then sew up a bunch for all the babies you know, because it was so ridiculously quick!
C’mon, baby, you’ve got some sweet stripey pants waiting for you!
