Reuse & upcycle: pajama pants to leggings (tutorial)

As promised, I bring you another reuse & upcycle project. This time I turned one of my husband's pajama pants into dark blue leggings for my daughter.

The pants were almost new and were originally discarded because the pajama top had a series of bleach spots. Well, those pants lived in my craft closet for almost four years and now, because I'm making a huge effort to declutter, I finally decided to make something out of them.

Because kids grow out of their pants fairly quick and leggings are a must in any girl's closet, I decided to create a small tutorial. To make the leggings, you don't actually need pajama pants, you can use any other kind of knit fabric (sweaters, t-shirts, your own old leggings etc). When my daughter was a baby I made several leggings out of old sweaters, sometimes using just the sleeves.

Anyway, lay one pair of leggings that fit your girl on top of the fabric your're using. If you're using other pants, re-use the bottom hem and one of the side seams.In the picture below you'll see that I added a bit of length at the bottom.

Using scissors or a rotary cutter, cut along the original leggings, leaving some extra fabric on the side (seam allowance) and a bigger margin on top, enough to fold over and make an elastic casing.

Cut both legs, making sure they are symmetrical and sew the side seams first.

Then place one of the pants legs inside the other, right sides together and sew the front and back seams. You can't see very well in the picture, but the leg on the outside is wrong side out and the one on the inside is right side out. When you put one inside the other and joint the edges, you will be sewing right sides together (if this is not clear enough, let me know)

When you turn everything inside out again, you should have something like this: 

Now the only thing left to do is to fold over the top and sew an elastic casing. Insert an elastic, close the opening and your leggings will be ready.

Since I'm almost sure that by the end of next spring these leggings will be too short anyway, this is an inexpensive way to make some additional clothes for your kids while getting rid of unused items we sometimes have laying around.

Enjoy,