No Side Seams Baby Pants

Got a pile of fabric scraps or old t-shirts?  Because they are perfect for making baby pants!

Of course, it probably costs peanuts to buy basic garments like these, but hey, you need to use up those scraps, right?  You can upcycle some old t-shirts and whip up a whole pile of little pants in an hour, while riding the moral high horse of only using your own slave labour.

These pants only have three seams, not including the hemming.  Freaking awesome.

For this project you will need:

• existing pants that fit to make a pattern from
• tracing paper and basic draughting tools
• not much fabric or old t-shirts.  I made mine from merino and cotton scraps.
• waistband elastic
• twin stretch needle
• wooly nylon thread for the bobbin on the sewing machine and one of the lower loopers on the overlocker

1. Lay flat your baby pants and trace them to make a pattern.  There are a couple of things to remember.  Firstly, you will need to stretch the waistband to get a true measurement for your pattern.  Secondly, you need to add seam allowance to the inner leg (I use 1cm) and extra length for the leg hem (2cm) and waistband (3cm).

 
 2.  Grab your fabric and cut on fold, twice.

3.  With the right sides together pin the front and back crotch seams and overlock.  If you're using thicker fabric that's quite stable, you won't even have to use pins, which makes overlocking quite a bit faster because you don't have to slow down to take out the pins.  I often have dreadful visions of going over a pin.  Arhhh the horror!

4. Now you can fold the Daliesque rectangle into something that actually looks like pants!  Pin and overlock the inner leg seam, making sure that the crotch seams don't shift.  Ugh, mismatched seams are an abomination.

5.  Fold and pin the top to make the waistband elastic casing.

Fold the seam allowance in the same direction to make sure it lies flat and doesn't twist

6.  Do the same with hemming the legs.

7.  Using the twin needle, hem the legs and sew around the waistband.  For the latter you need to leave enough of a gap for the elastic to fit and also leave a gap between the start and end of the stitch for pulling the elastic through.  I always make that the back of the garment.  I went colour mental here and used contrasting thread.

8.  Nearly finished!  Stick a safety pin in one end of the elastic and pull through the waistband casing. 

9.  Stitch the elastic ends together and wiggle the waistband to pull the elastic inside its casing.

Sweet.  Done.