Tutorial Sewing Pants From a Sweater Part 2

Happy Earth Day! I think this is a good project for Earth Day. You can reuse all your old sweaters and make new baby clothes. After your child grows out of them pass them on to another child.


Part 2

Yesterday I went over how to make leggings (sweater pants) out of sleeves but we still have the body of the sweater and it would be a shame to toss out all that soft stretchy fabric! Lets make another pair of pants. I have 2 girls so this method works perfect for me.

After making yesterdays pants this is what I have left.

First cut off the neck if it is a turtle neck. The turtleneck is very handy to use if the sweater isn't long enough. When I don't need the turtleneck for extra room at the top of pants I cut it off to save because it makes a nice easy waist for a twirl skirt, a headband, or cuffs for pants or sleeves. This one will become a drop waist twirl skirt soon.This is the part that a ruler or a straight edge will come in handy. I want to use the arm cut out to form the crotch. With this pair I cut off the neck dip. I used a ruler to draw a line to cut off the neck and extra material. This is how I make the pattern for all my snug leggings and PJ's for my girls.


This is what the line looks like.
Cut along the line.
The chunk of fabric on the right can be used if you run short on fabric (have children a different size than my children). When I use a XL or an XXL men's sweater the center pices are large enough to make a 3rd pair of leggings for my girls.

When we open them up it should look like this.


Put one on top of the other with right sides TOUCHING each other and sew. Picture below shows the place to sew in a black line.

When open to show right sides out and sides open it should look like this.

Below is a picture to show that I still have plenty of room for my girls. This fabric is VERY stretchy and without stretching it I have about 10 inches of fabric for front and back. My skinny 3 1/2 year old is under 20 inches around her tummy. To make snug leggings just turn them inside out and sew the sides together then add elastic at the waist like I showed in part one.

I didn't do that with this because I figured that would be easy for everyone to figure out. I also think pink leggings are only useful for little girls and I wanted something that I could share for boys or girls to wear. I think if you took a blue sweater you could use the arms for PJ's then take the body of the sweater and this set of directions to make little jogging pants perfect for boys.

I had some thermal gray fabric (got a few years ago from Walmart $1 bin). Any stretchy fabric will work. You can use an old T-shirt, pieces from another sweater, or you can cut up your husbands old long johns. I used 2 strips about 4 inches wide. You can go wider or thinner depending on how loose or tight you want your pants. I did cut my strips a bit longer than my pink pants because this fabric is fabric without a hem and my pink pants used the finished waist of the sweater as the bottom so I don't need to mess with a hem on that part.


Finishing up the bottom is easy. Just fold up a tiny bit at the bottom bringing up the raw edge then fold again hiding the raw edge down inside the fold. Pin the bottom to hold in place.
sew to tack down the folds
With wrong side facing out (notice the seam is showing) pin the side fabric to the pants along one edge.

Make sure to line up the bottom even so your pants look nice at the bottom. The buldge from the fold should be facing up (nicer side of side fabric will be facing down.
Then pin the unpinned edge to the other side like this.


Do the same for the other side. Double check your ends because you really want a tidy even bottom to the pants. The waist folds down and doesn't show but the bottom will show and look silly if it isn't lined up. When you sew start at the bottom and check the ends are still together neatly under the presser foot.
Sew up both sides and you will have something like this. I did this several months ago and I have no idea why I turned the pants to take this picture! If I would have left them inside out they would have been all ready to sew down the top to make the waist.
Fold down the top around the waist about an inch and sew around leaving an inch or two open to insert elastic. You can sew around the elastic like I showed in part 1. This time I sewed around and used a safetypin to push elastic inside the pants.

Picture below shows how I measure my elastic. I lay my pants down on or near a ruler and slide the pants up (scrunching them) until the elastic is about 9 inches (my girls are about the same measurement around the tummy). I need a bit over 9 so I have a little room on the ends to sew together (I guess you can see my sewing is very forgiving so estamates work no need to be exact).Form a loop with the open ends of elastic.

Sew ends together.
Tuck ends inside fold.Sew opening closed.

Done!
If you have any questions just drop me a note. I hope I wrote this clear enough that a person new to sewing can understand. Some people are afraid to sew knits. If you followed this I hope you found that sewing on knits is simple and fun. You can go dig in your husbands T-shirt bin and make some pants using the same directions and have warmer weather pants.

Have fun making your jogging pants.