Long-Sleeved Top to Little Boy Pajama Pants Refashion

Today I was looking for some inspiration on what to do for my next refashion post.

I realized I’ve already made several things for my daughter. (See 49-Cent Friday: American Girl Doll Refashion, and 49-Cent Friday: T-Shirt to Girl’s Dress Refashion.) Meanwhile, my poor sons have been left out.

The thing is, it’s a lot easier for me to come up with cute girly refashions than boyish ones. So I thought, “hmm, who should I start with, the younger son or the older?” Then I remembered that my little guy was starting to grow out of all of his pajama pants. (Seriously, it’s starting to look like he’s expecting a flood.)

So I decided to make him a brand spanking new pair of jammie pants.

After searching through my massive to-be-refashioned pile of clothes, I found this…

meh

This is a shirt of mine that’s all stretched out and look…

Holey moley!

Yep, a big ol’ armpit hole!

Well seeing as how I won’t be wearing this as-is, it’s the perfect thing to refashion into a pair of p.j. pants. Also, with St. Patty’s day coming up, he’ll have something festive to dream of leprechauns in.

To get started, I found a pair of jammie pants (that fit him the best) to use as a guide…

Spidey pants!

I turned them inside out, folded them in half, and then tried to figure out how to fit them on the shirt.

The deep neckline made that kind of tricky, but I think I made it work.

Now to get cutting…

Cut it out!

Once that was cut out, I only had one half of the would-be pants. The problem was, I didn’t have a big enough piece of shirt left to cut out the remaining half.

To solve this dilemma, I cut up the seam of each sleeve, smoothed out the material, and then placed one sleeve on top of the other, like so…

Notice the problem?

I don’t know if you can see from the picture, but the top sleeve material is shorter than the bottom sleeve. :/

EEK!

I didn’t want to get this far into the refashion to just give up! So I decided to put some of the shirt scraps to good use, and piece them together to elongate the top sleeve. (I knew this would make some weird looking seams in the pant legs, but I thought it might look cool, and hey, if not, he’ll just be wearing them to bed after all!)

Piece it together like a puzzle!

Now to stitch it all up…

Stitchy stitchy

Once that puzzle was completed, I now had 4 identical pattern pieces all ready to be made into pants.

I took two of those pieces and stitched the straight side (outer leg) from one end to the other.

Whirrrr

Then I took the other two pieces and did the same…

Whirrrrr

It’s coming along nicely folks…

Look! Two pant legs!

Next I connected the pant legs at the crotch area and sewed the back side up.

Now they’re taking shape!

Can you see it? They kinda look like pants now huh?

Next I sewed the front side up.

Rather than just hemming the pant legs, I thought I would add a cuff to make them look more finished.
I just happened to have the perfect thing for the job!

Look at those awesome cuffs!

(Spoiler alert: The above top is actually this week’s 49-Cent Friday Refashion, so stay tuned!)
I had something specific in mind for this top, and it didn’t involve sleeves, so I knew it would be perfect to steal the cuffs from for my current refashion. (And they’re green!)

I got busy cutting off those contrasting cuffs…

Snip snip!

With the pajama pants inside out, I placed each (right side out) cuff in each pant leg, matching right sides together, and pinning each unfinished edge together like so…

Hopefully that made sense!

Then I just stitched them together…

Zig-zag stitches

Once those cuffs were all stitched up, I had a cute pair of jammies with contrasting cuffs.
All that was left to do was add the elastic waistband.

Using the waist band from the Spiderman pajama pants as my guide, I figured out how long the elastic would need to be, and cut it to the desired length.
Then I made a casing to house the elastic, by folding the top (waist part) of the pajama pants over about 1/4″ and sewed. Then I measured the width of the elastic (which was about 1″) and folded the top (waist part) of the pajama pants over again, 1/4″ more than the width of the elastic, (to make sure the elastic would fit in the casing) making sure to leave an opening in the casing to fit the elastic through.

See the opening?

I have this really cool doohickey that’s sole purpose is to pull elastic (or drawstrings or what have you) through casings. The problem is, I have kids and they like to mess with my stuff. So I couldn’t find my awesome doohickey. Not to fear, I do have a safety pin, and that works just as well!
To get my elastic quickly and easily through the casing, I just added a safety pin onto the end of the elastic, and used it to help me grasp on and fish it all the way through to the other end…

Easy peasy!

I overlapped the elastic ends, ran them quickly through my machine, back and forth to reinforce.

See?

Almost done, now sew that casing closed!

Sew it up!

My little guy didn’t know I was making him pajama pants until they were all finished, so he was excited!

Comfy cozy!

The cuffs are folded up, so as he grows, they can be unfolded to lengthen the legs and fit longer!

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my latest refashion!

I wanted to thank Rhonda of Rhonda’s Creative Life blog for the lovely feature in her recent Wednesday Showcase post. I was very honored and humbled when I read the sweet things she had to say! Rhonda is a very talented and creative lady and her blog is a lot of fun to read.

Have a great day!

~Jen

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