Monday, September 1, 2008

Up in arms




















I made this cute little pair of pants for Yashar from the sleeves of an old business shirt of Senol's and I am so happy with how they turned out! I especially love the cuffs, they remind me of little sailor pants for some reason and I also love that Yashar gets to wear something that was his 'Baba's'.

Yashar needed some light cotton pj pants. His legs always seem to get a little cold at night, especially now that it is getting cooler in the evenings (what a relief!) and I wanted to keep off any mosquitoes that manage to get in at night. I couldn't find any at the shops nearby so decided to make some.

I cut the sleeves off 40cm up from the cuff (34cm for the pants length and an extra 6cm to sew in the top elastic (I based the measurements on another pair of his pants). I cut a wedge/triangular shape out of each arm, with the point approximately 22cm from the cuff end of the sleeve and the wider end of the triangle at the top of the sleeve. The wedge was slightly more curved on one side to allow a little more rounding for the seat of the pants. I then sewed the matching edges of the wedges from each sleeve together (i.e., the two legs of the pants together). After that I folded the top of the sleeves/pants over twice to form a 3cm wide waist band and sewed around the bottom of that, leaving a gap at the back to insert the elastic. I threaded the length of elastic through using a safety pin and, once in, sewed the two ends together. I then sewed over the gap.

Voila! A pair of cute little pants. Hope you like them!

6 comments:

Simple Answer said...

Adorable!

Tanya said...

Inspired what a clever idea!

Heidi Jo the Artist said...

Thanks for commenting on my blog! Very cute pants, what an awesome idea!

Anonymous said...

That is a great idea and they look so trendy - what a good use for shirt sleeves! This idea opens up a Pandora's box.

Anonymous said...

Can you make me a pair? :)
The photo of Yashar wearing those pants is absolutely adorable.
I am in awe of your creativity!
Love, Rand xxx

Anonymous said...

Fabulous pants. Repurposing big clothes is great in so many ways. Cute photo of the wee dude.