15 minute Pants

A few days ago I mentioned that I would be back soon with an easy sew pants tutorial. Well get this! I am actually back with the tutorial. Pictures included and all. AMAZING! That means that I was able to 1. find my camera, 2. my table was free of food particles so I could actually cut fabric and 3. my monsters (I mean darling children) allowed me the 25 minutes it took to sew these up. But I digress. This is what the end result is:

So, your first step is to find a pair of RTW (that's ready to wear if you aren't in the know)pants that fit the person you are making them for. Then you need to fold them up, with the front of the pants hidden, and the back exposed, making a little point in the butt. Don't you like me technical terms? lol This is what your pants need to look like before you start cutting.

Then with the butt pointing to the outer part of the fabric, cut with an approximate 1/2 inch added. After you cut the one side, flip the pants and cut the other side out, with another 1/2 inch added. Note: Please add at least 1 1/2 inches to the top of the "pattern". You'll see why later.

Now take your pattern pieces and turn them right sides facing each other. Pin the top part, that will be your waist, serge or sew up the rise. If you're sewing, use a 3/8" seam.

Now you want to take your pants to the other side of the house where you have your iron because you are just organized like that. You are going to iron leg cuffs by folding the pants "leg" up, then up again. Then stitch a cuff, remembering to backstitch or go back a bit to lock the stitching.

Now you are going to trek back to the East Wing to serge up the pants legs. If you were truly organized you would remember to also press the waist. Alas, I am NOT this organized so we'll come back to it. with right sides still facing, match up the crotch seams and pin the legs. Start at one cuff line, sew/serge all the way to the other cuff edge. Backstitch! Now we go back and iron down the waist (this is why we left extra inches at the top of our pattern), then sew around the waist creating a casing but leave at least one inch unstitched to allow room for feeding the elastic through. After you feed the elastic through the casing, sew the two ends together and now you can finish your
pants by closing up the casing seam.

And Viola! You now have a super cute, easy, and quick pair of pants and you even created the pattern!

What's that you say?

"Eh? You have to speak up, I can't hear you! Let me call you back!" Chances are if you want to convey a message to me during the day, and make the mistake of doing it verbally, you have heard this in numerous variations and tones. You will have also learned that the internet is my life line to adult communication.

Between the cars being driven on the wall or launched off the couch to only clatter onto the laminate floors, someone is crying that somebody else did this or that, the new guy is crying because he can't sleep over the chaos and darn it!, he's hungry too. It gets insanely noisy in our home. Tonight we have the roar of the crowd (Monday Night Football, clattering of dishes, correcting of little tantrums, and if you listen very carefully you might hear the whir of a sewing machine and serger. That's right, it's the time of year when my sewing gets kicked up quite a bit.

Todays project were flannel lounge pants. I drafted the patterns and you should be o the lookout for a pictirial. I'm getting a couple Christmas gifts out of the way early. And suprisignly, if you ask who they're for, all you'll hear is silence!

Hello from the trenches of mommyhood!

Wowza, wowza, it has been such a very long time that I visited my own blog! Let's see, since my last entry, I've become pregnant with our fifth and final addition, and even better, actually given birth to him, and managed to lose sleep falling in love for well over a month! It really has been that long.

I do apologize for my extended absence. It was a horrid pregnancy that seemed to hit me just when my (now)middle son learned how to climb. EVERYTHING. Add spidey-boy to complicated pregnancies and I just had nothing to give the blog, much less my sewing or crafting. Heck, I even gave up on being frugal. We ate out a lot. I bought fabric, and it sat in my closet. That's it. But the end result is absolutely wonderful and worth it all (though I'm done. Truly DONE).

Introducing King, the newest reason for my tired eyes and happy smiles