kcwc: adult-to-kid pants refashion.

Meg's kids' clothes week challenge has surely become one of my favorite internet crafting phenomena.  And I was all worried I was going to miss this round due to houseguests--but luckily schedules were changed and a guest room was quickly re-transformed into a sewing space in time to get busy this week.

I've had this project on my mind since scoring a unique pair of ladies' jeans at Gap for super cheap--maybe 3 or 4 dollars?  Their clearance sales can be pretty outstanding.  And I remembered these super cute pairs Meg made last kcwc, and some similar ones I made for Owen from a pair of my old pants a while back. 

But in this case the details I most loved--adjustable button waist, pleats, belt loops that went up and over the waistband--were all at the top of the pants.  So the typical start-at-ankles, save-the-hem, attach-elastic-waistband approach I'm used to was not going to work. 

Resizing adult pants for a kid and saving the waist details is much trickier.  There may or may not be an internet tutorial for remaking pants this way out there (anyone know?), but I ended up using the old fashioned "wing it" approach--and I'm pretty happy with how they came out!  I was telling someone on flickr that I may try this again and take photos toward a tutorial--we'll see if that pans out, but for now you can just enjoy some process and result photos.













The belt in the one shot, by the way, is one I made months ago but never blogged--also a wing-it effort but Meg now has a great tutorial for a similar design available.  And the black and white shirt you see in the kneeling photo is my world-famous bias tape tunic.  And the long tab fastening, with the little elastic band loop?  Definitely my favorite.