Upcycled T-Shirt to Baby Pants

Last week marked the first time I had to buy Daisy clothes. She's right in the middle of the charts for weight, but she's in the 90th percentile for height. A long, lean girl! That means that her waist fits in 6-9 month pants, but her legs are 12-month long.

I don't have time to figure out if you can buy pants without getting a whole outfit (Target didn't have any). Since I mainly need pajama pants for her, I decided to delve into my give-away pile and make her some custom-fit pants.

The little red pants are 12-month pants that I used as a pattern for size. I've seen this method on several other blogs. It's pretty simple.

1. Fold the pattern pants in half like in the picture, and lay them on your fabric. In this case, I'm using the bottom hem of the pajama pants (the floral ones) as the waist-line for the baby pants. 

2. Cut out leaving a 1/2 inch of fabric all around. Repeat. I used the other pajama pant leg (the floral one), so I could keep the same hem-line/waist line. 

3. Unfold the pieces and lay them together right-sides in. Then pin the short sides and sew together. 

I ended up adding a little panel on the "butt" side of her pants to give her extra butt-space for her big cloth diapers. If you're using paper diapers, then that's not necessary, because there's plenty of space. Unless your baby has a honkytonk bandonkadonk.

Okay no picture for the next steps.

4. After you have sewn the short sides, sew a short hem at the bottom of the pants around the ankles. I just folded it in 1/4'' and zig-zag stitched it down. 

5. Open the pants and fold them along the original side seams (the seam that's running down the center of the picture above) They should look like inside-out pants. Sew the inside seam of the legs. 

6. Thread an elastic band through the waist line and hand-sew the elastic together. Then hand-sew the gaps closed. 

Done. Here's how I made the baby pants out of a t-shirt. 

I used the bottom hem of the shirt as the waist-line of the pants. It just makes it WAY easier when you get to the elastic-inserting phase at the end. 

This t-shirt had cuffs on the sleeves, so I cut one of them off. Then I cut the cuff in half, and sewed it to the bottom of the baby pants instead of sewing a hem. 

Voila. As you can see, they're still a little long, but that's good, because she will keep growing. 

This whole project took about 90 minutes, including a couple stages of ripping stitches and re-sewing. You could probably crank out several in one sitting once you get the hang of it. I only have Tuesdays at home with Daisy, but over the course of two naps, I finished both pairs.