Sewing Pants

I have been having a number of rants lately. I hate kids clothes. Actually more accurately I hate the clothes they sell for kids at the shops. It's frustrating buying clothes for the kids because Lana is growing up but not out and Caiden is just growing. Both kids don't fit the clothes in the store properly and honestly the styles are awful. The girls shorts are extremely short and uncomfortable and the boys shorts are boring. Also when I measure her she's extremely small around the waist and extremely tall in the legs. It isn't any fun trying to get something store bought that sits comfortably.

So this rant is going somewhere. Ages ago I bought one of the One Thimble magazines. (Issue 5 if you want to find this pattern) I now have a couple in my arsenal and they are a great little magazine full of kids sewing patterns and other stuff. I love them because they have all sorts of tutorials and information. It's not only kids clothes there are other projects available. I made the stitchidori from a tutorial in the latest issue.

Now the whole purpose of this post is because I finally made some clothes for the kids from this magazine. I don't know why it took me so long to try out this pattern... but I think the kids will be getting a number of clothes from these magazines as they look so much smarter and nicer than everything in the shop. I love these shorts because I don't have to sew any zippers in and the waist band is knit fabric which sits comfortably around their waists.

I took the kids to the shop and got them to pick out some fabric. Caiden only wanted skulls and thankfully we managed to find some. Red and grey ones which are pretty awesome. I will pair the grey skulls with the red fabric from cat in the hat (you saw a photo of what that will look like yesterday) and I paired the red ones with a navy blue fabric.

Then I had to think about Lana. She was much harder to pick for as she was being entirely annoyingly picky. But then she fell in love with the pink skulls and I had to agree. We also found some music fabric and some pink which I will pair together. She just wanted to go home but still wanted me to make the pants now! You can just hear the dilemma.

Now I got home and washed the fabrics and was cutting the first pair out as the kids went to bed. Here was mistake no. 1 trying to sew anything late at night. I sewed one of the panels on upside down and didn't realise until I'd finished all the top stitching. So there I am 9 o'clock at night unpicking and resewing because I wanted to get up to putting the band on by the time I went to bed. Then at 5am the next morning there I am sewing the waist band on and trying to get it all finished before the munchkins woke so I could show it off. 

Mistake no.  2! Sewing and finishing the waist band without physically measuring it on the child. It ended up being way too loose and I again had to sit there desperately unpicking half of the band sewing the seam tighter and then sewing the back of the band back on.  Gosh that's a mouthful! They fit Lana beautifully but unfortunately on caiden they're still loose he has NO hips or anything and constantly has this problem with clothes.  But talking to grandma about it and her solution was to add elastic into the band.  As it starts to wear I will have to do that I think. Something at least to pull it close on the waist instead of just sitting as he has nothing to sit on! He's straight from his shoulders down to his hips.  No definable waist to size to!

But even with those small mistakes that thankfully only lose me time but nothing else. I managed to complete them in a couple of days. Now Caiden is complaining that they are loose so I may have to come back and add that elastic sooner rather than later but we will see how they last. 

I do love how these shorts turned out and I am looking forward to making many many more.

Actually Lana in particular has requested that she has more shorts and she doesn't want to use her shorter more uncomfortable shorts anymore. Which makes me really happy because she wants to use the shorts that I'm making her. 

Have you made clothes? Have you sewn clothes for other people? I would love to hear about your experiences with sewing or even shopping for children.

This post contains affiliate links it won't cost you any extra but if you do buy the magazine I will get a bit from it.

Happy Stitching, 

Caitlin