bard breeches

a few months ago i saw this tutorial by my dear sheri on how to recuperate a child’s pants that fit in the waist but are too short and make these very stylish breeches!

in the tutorial she uses, besides the pants, too-short tights, both to get cut up. i didn’t have any sufficiently boyish tights that i was totally sure we wouldn’t use for him again (for example, to wear under pants when going in the mountains), so i took a quick inventory of what i already had. and i remembered the onesie sleeves i’d cut off last summer to make short-sleeved onesies.

i had to tighten the sleeves and shorten the pants.

sewn together, right sides together, and there’s a newly-lengthened pair of shakespearean pants!

unfortunately the sleeves still weren’t tight enough, not being stretchy, so it didn’t look the way it should’ve (and i couldn’t tighten them any more, or else it would’ve been impossible to slip his feet through).

but worn with socks over them looks kind of cool.

i actually had two pairs of pants in the same “waiter/chef” style and both were too short for my little guy, so i took the other chef pants and a pair of the upper parts left over from my DIY ankle socks. unfortunately i cut the pants too short, so i had to sew the cut pieces back on. (talk about bad use of time. see? it never pays to rush through a project without trying it on!) here you can see from the inside after sewing the sock/tights/sleeve to the pants (with a zig zag stitch to let it stretch a bit).

now that looks *much* better! the top part of the socks were tight enough but also stretched to get his feet through. you can’t even hardly tell that i did some cutting and pasting, so to speak! and so i managed to recuperate two pairs of pants that were too short in a unique way. once again, thank you sheri for your fantastic ideas!