Making Baby Pants into Kid Pants

BEFORE: These are the baby pants on my 3-year old.  He discovered them when I was sorting clothes for his little brother, and had to hold them and touch them and feel them.  He even had to wear them.  You see, the fabric they are made of is the other half of what has become his security blanket.  The idea that he could just wear "Blue" was so appealing that he squished himself into these pants.

MIDPOINT: After he admitted they weren't all that comfortable, we squished him out of them and added some more fabric.  The original fabric was long gone, so we took some yellow fleece and added it mid-way down the legs.  I did this by cutting the pant legs, then eyeballing how long to add, and cutting fabric to that length and sewing it to the cut pant legs.

The color block reminded him of other pants I have made with front patch pockets, so he asked for pockets.  I opted to put them on the sides so I wouldn't block the striped fabric.  To make them, I cut fleece squares, folded them in half, and sewed around three sides.  Then I sewed them into the side seams.  I also sewed a length of fabric into the side seams to make them wider.  Shockingly, the waist was fine, as was the rise.  I did a bit of squishing to get the green fabric to sit nicely against the waist, which I left intact.

As you can see, I eyeballed the length a bit too long.  I didn't want to hem them because I wanted as much of the striped fabric as possible to show.  So I folded the fabric in the yellow section.

Instead of hemming the yellow, or cutting it again, I did some tacking of the material in place to make some pockets.  We decided rocks and other treasures could go in these lower pockets.

AFTER: He is quite happy with them.  I think they ended up a bit bulky in the pockets (both the upper and leg pockets).  If I would do it again, I would use a thinner fabric for the pockets.  I may fix them by tacking them in place; after a few hours, the fabric of the pocket seemed to come out a bit.  But all this extra fabric may be good on cold days.  Plus, who wouldn't love wearing their security blanket around?

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