Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Refashioned Pants and What to do with the Leftovers


I must confess that there are some things in my closet that have been their a LONG time without ever getting worn.  Some, like this unfortunate pair of paints have, in fact, never been worn (note the tag):

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I bought this pair of pants with a suit jacket back when I was teaching (gasp!  at least four years ago) and all it was waiting for was to be hemmed.  I had gotten as far as pinning up one side to the length I would want it and that was that.

Two pregnancies later I am the same size again and, looking through my closet, I saw this.  Now though, I would have nowhere to wear this pair of pants, so I decided to cut into them and make a skirt that I can wear with the jacket to church. 

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Sorry this picture doesn't show the skirt off much (I got too focused on taking pictures of what I did with the resulting scraps).  The skirt was a basic knee length with a kick pleat at center back.  All I did was open out the legs of the trousers and pin them back together with the “skirt” on to get a good shape.  The legs had enough built in ease that this was really…well, easy :).

Because the trouser legs were quite wide at the bottom I started to feel like it would be a real waste not to use the cut offs for something.  My daughter happened to be just small enough that I thought I might be able to squeeze a dress out of it for her.

I used McCall’s 6015, combining the view with the tulip sleeves and a solid top bodice piece.  I had to take in the fullness of the skirt by almost half in order to have enough fabric, but made it work. I am sure it is a little annoying to crawl in because of that lack, but maybe that will encourage walking :).

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I decided to make us even more matchy-matchy by taking a subtle embroidered motif present on my jacket lapel and recreating it on Quinn’s bodice.  I think it turned out well (even though you can’t really see the outlining color in these pictures because it blends too well with the bodice—like I said: subtle design). 

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What do you do with scrap yardage?    

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