Kids Pants

February Vacation seemed to come around really early this year, I felt like the kids had barely gotten back after Christmas and it was time for another break.  We had a pretty easy going break - especially the second half after J came down with a gastro bug.  I did a small amount of sewing but not much as I wanted to spend the time with the kids and figured I could get back to things after the kids were back in school.

Sunday rolled around and we were all gearing up to head back and I had a million  plans for what I was going to sew...and then we get the phone call.  There was some air quality testing done over the break and some of those reading came back high. They were closing the school till they could get some more testing done..I'm glad that they take the safety of the kids seriously, but there go my sewing plans.  I had planned to go to the fabric store on Monday to pick up the notions that I needed but the kids hate going fabric shopping.....so I did what any good mother would do.  I bribed them.  If you come and are good I'll buy you each a piece of fabric and make you something....

Of course one piece of fabric turned into two pieces each, but hey at least I was able to get done what I needed.

L has been obsessed with cats, and more specifically tigers lately so she chose a cat patterned fleece for a pair of pants, and then found a tiger print velour fabric.  I could tell that she really loved it, but didn't know what to do with it, so I suggested a pair of harem type pants which she jumped at.  J went for the Boston Red Sox fleece fabric and a black and white check fleece (These guys are definitely into comfort over style - its fleece all the way).

A lot of my spare time lately has been spent reading up on how to make a pants sloper.  I've figured out how the top sloper works (that's not to say I've been successful in making anything out of the sloper I've made but that's beside the point).  Now I want to focus on the bottom half.  I think I've got it figured out but before I start on a sloper for me I figured I could practice on L and J so I sat down and made up two new slopers.  One for L with a nice high rise as she likes her pants to sit up above her belly button, and one for J with a low rise as he likes his pants down on his hips. Of course since the kids don't really like fitted pants I then went and added a heap of ease of both patterns, but it was a good practice for me and I think I'm now ready to tackle a pants sloper for myself.

So armed with my new slopers and all this new material I started on making the kids new pants. I decided I wanted to start with the Tiger print pants for L. These were very basic pants - no pockets, with a black knit rib cuff on the bottom and a waistband in the same tiger material and elastic in the waistband.

 

I made them extra long so you can't really see the cuffs when she's wearing them, but she will grow into them...probably very quickly knowing her.

Next up was the black and white checked fabric, to be made into a pair of pants for J.  My biggest problem was that the checks are not linear, they curve around in different directions.  I ended up totally ignoring the pattern and cutting the pants however was easiest.

These pants have pockets - I'm not thrilled with how they turned out - the opening is just  too big and bags out really badly, next time I will make it a lot smaller.

The other difference is the waistband.  Rather than use a fabric waistband I sewed 1.5" wide black elastic directly to the top of the pants.

Next up the fleece fabric covered in cats.  L wanted a pair of pants and is happy with the final product, but me not so much.  I think this fabric would have been better as anything but pants - but that's what she wanted!

 

Since the cats on the fabric were not all aligned in the same way, and I didn't have a lot of extra fabric to play with, I decided that I wasn't going to worry about the pattern too much when I was cutting the fabric.  This turned out to be a pretty big mistake.  I got the the very first step of sewing the front crotch seam and reaslised what I'd done.  Right at the very front there were two half cat faces in the same colour that came very close to aligning.  Sounds good right.  Right up till the point that you see where that part of the pants sit on her.  Oh well  - hopefully she wears long tshirts with these pants.

As far as details goes, I made the pocket opening in these much smaller and they turned out much better.  The waistband again is just your basic elastic and the cuffs are turned about about 5 inches to allow for a lot of growth.

Last but not least in my non selfish sewing was the sweater for J in Red Sox fabric.

I was originally planning on just using my basic zip front hoodie pattern but then ended up doing a quick google search for boys hoodie patterns free and found almost exactly what I was looking for.  Shwin and Shwin had a hoodie pattern for an 8 yo boy.   The only thing it was missing was a pocket but that was easy enough to draft.  I went for a kangaroo pouch type pocket which J loves.

For this project I really wanted to make sure the motif was placed correctly especially on the front, thankfully I had just enough material to do what I wanted.

I found a red knit rib in my stash that worked perfectly for the cuffs and bottom band

And went with a white knit fabric to line the hood.

  I was so happy with the final product and best of all J loves it too.