KCWC - Day 3

Before

                                                                               

After

You can check out other entries here.

Hope to see you soon!

Petra

KCWC Fall 2011 Upcycled boy pants - tutorial

Technically, the first day of Kids clothes week challenge was yesterday, but since I finished my first projet at 2 AM, I can only write about it today. This is my first ever sewing challenge and I am really excited to show you what I've done. So let's start:

Besides the KCWC I decided to challenge myself a bit further, an not buy ANYTHING new, to see where I get with stuff I have at home, and here is what I came up with:

I have a skinny 2.5 year old, who still fits into his pants from a year ago, with one tiny problem...they are all too short, so I decided to start with that.

A too short track suit bottom, cargo pants mom doesn't fit into anymore, and a skirt mom never really fitted into in the first place.

Other things you will need:


-scissors
-sewing machine
-thread in your colour of choice
-measuring tape
-taylors chalk
-spirit level (if you want to to it exacly the way I did:)

I didn't really like the shape of pant legs, they were too baggy, so I decided to straiten them just a little bit. This is where the spirit level came in handy.

NOOOO, you don't really need a spirit level for this step..I just didn't have anything else on hand.






I was going to sew along the chalk line first, but then I realised it will be much easier to put in the pocket if I just cut the legs open.

This what my pants looked like at that point, and the print is where I wanted the pocket - to cover it.

Enter the cargo pant:

I cut out the whole pocket , then I resized it roughly to the size I needed to cover up the print on my track suit bottom, then I tried to trim it as nicely as I could to make a square. Because all the edges of the pocket would stay visible, I zigzagged it all around with a tiny zigzag, pinned it nicely where I wanted them, ans sewed around with strait stitch.

Now, I don't have a separate photo for this, but the small triange corner on the right side of the pocket had to be sewn on separately, so we could have a real pocket, not just a mimicked one.








Now onto the waistband. As you probably figured already, this is what the skirt was used for. I replaced the original one, to gain some length on the upper side too. I basically just cut off the waistband from the skirt and cut it down to the lenght of the original one. Here it is, already zigzagged all around:

Next, I took the removable part of my sewing machine off, to make it easier to sew around the tiny waist.

Now I pinned it very carefully, making sure I'm pinning all the layers.

This is what it looked like from the inside

 Now I just stitched as close as I could to the waistband, making sure I don't stitch through the outside part of the waistband, this way making it almost invisible.

When I finally sewed the crotch back together they looked like this leaving me with one last task...which actually started it all - LENGHTENING the pants to fit my son.

 I used one of his fitting pants to measure the needed length, cut off the bottom of my pants with their existing seam, measured the width of his pants, and made a ring.

I zigzagged it across the seam several times, because I wanted the zigzag to be visible from the outside.















When I stiched it to the pants, I tried to follow the original thread trace, to keep the original look.

And voila! We are done:














I hope the tutorial was understandable. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, comment, or write me an e-mail. This is my first tutorial ever, and I must admit it was much harder to write it than to make those pants.

Hope you come back for more!

Petra


Update: Linked to the Get Your Craft on Tuesday link party!

News from Belgrade

Having spent my weekend in Belgrade, I learned about some pretty interesting projects in the field of creativity and recycling. I would like to mention two in particular:

1. Reciklašar - a recycling fair is a project aiming to show that it is possible to create art from recycling. All artists using recycled or re-purposed materials had the right to enter the contest, and around 20 of the chosen participants will have their works displayed at the exhibition on October 15th in Belgrade.

This years 'fair' is already the fourth one, and just another one in the array of projects organized by

Ekocentrik is a non-profit organization founded in Belgrade in 2011 by young enthusiasts. Their idea was to attract attention to current issues through different educational, multimedia, art etc. projects and to involve interested parties through different happenings, workshops, forums thus showing that we all play equally important parts in protecting the environment and the world we live in.

* You can find the definition of ecocentrism here.    

2. Creative Women – inventions from Sweden, exhibition opening on October 12th at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Belgrade. The exhibition will focus on women's creativity and present both world-renowned women inventors as well as less known inventions that came about as a result of every day needs and creative way of these women to simplify their lives.Out of more than 40 investors presented, the youngest one was 15 when she patented her invention, while the oldest one was 87. 
Part of the exhibition is also dedicated to Serbian women inventors, members of Belgrade association of inventors as well as industrial design students.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to see any of those two, I can just hope we will be able to get some photo journal from Reciklašar, and that the Creative Women exhibition, being a travelling exhibition, will find it's way to Hungary too. 


Petra



P.S. I love comments, so please leave some if you'd like.