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When you find an adorable skirt at Goodwill and your child says they would be the perfect soft material for pants, you make a pair of easy flowy pants! I have the child that is extremely picky about what pants she wears. They have to be made out of the perfect soft material, with just the right not too tight legs and also be high rise, oh and of course be cute. Phew! That’s a lot. Needless to say, we can never find a pair of pants she likes. So, what do you do? DIY some out of a nice soft skirt that she thinks is cute, where I have full control over how high they rise and how tight the legs are. Yep.
Find a Skirt
The first step is to actually find a skirt that is the perfect soft material to make your easy flowy pants from. Bonus if it’s from a thrift store and costs only $2. Make sure it’s big enough. I am sewing for a little girl, so a women’s skirt in any size will do as long as it’s not a pencil skirt.
Make a Pattern
This can be as easy or hard as you want it to be. I rarely purchase patterns because I am more of a “wing it” type of person. If you want to be fancy, you could actually buy a pattern too. I used an existing pair of pants she already had (and knows she likes) to copy the pattern from. If you’re going to use a pair of pants you already own, turn the pants inside out and lay them on top of the skirt. The skirt needs to also be inside out. Use a green washable marker to trace around the right side of the pants, then flip them over to trace the left side of the pants. I did this because I did not want to have a seam on both sides of the legs, just the inside only. Then carefully cut the pants out making sure not to separate the layers. Some people like to use pins to keep the layers together, but that just takes extra time.
Sew
First, sew the front and back seams together. Whether it’s easy flowy pants or leggings, always sew the front and back seams first. Next, match the legs together and sew the leg seams. I used the bottom of the skirt because it was already hemmed, but if you didn’t, you would also want to go ahead and hem the bottom openings of the legs now too. Last, sew the casing around the waist for the elastic. Again, you could also use the existing waistband from the skirt, but my child didn’t like the one on this skirt because it was “too un-comfy.” So we found a much smaller piece of elastic and threaded it into the casing instead. Check the elastic length against her waist, then cut off a few inches and sew it together. Sew up the hole where you inserted the elastic and BOOM, you’ve got an adorable pair of easy flowy pants.
Show Them Off
Wear these pants to everything so everyone can see them. Ok, maybe not everything because knowing my child, they will have a hole in them in no time and she’ll be asking for me to make more. Darn. Thankfully they don’t take too long to make. But aren’t they cute?
Now I just need to get her to sew her own pants! Someday….maybe.
