Making jeans

Lets face it.  As much as we love sewing dresses and seeing our little girls in them, they really live in pants.  And, if you are sewing for boys, pants are truly your main option for bottoms.

So, having a great go-to pants pattern is essential for daily-wear sewing projects.  But, that can seem a little boring.  And, you don't want to make the exact same pant over and over again.

You can always buy a new pattern (and we do want to support Indie designers and others that design for tweens) but our wallets can only handle so much.  Acknowledging this reality, I dedicated this post to showing how a change in fabric and technique can really change up the look of your standard pant.

Last year I reviewed the BurdaStyle dyed pant (After sewing so many burdastyle patterns I decided to be an affiliate and their add is on our page).  It is a great skinny jean pattern with professional finishes (though the instructions leave something to be desired).

Burda's Girl's Dyed Pant 02/2013

They were Abi's favorite pant that I made so she requested new ones with a few adjustments.  She asked for a pair to have wider ankles, a modified boot cut, and one with more straight legs.

The first new pair I made was out of a white stretch denim.  Not the most practical of pant material for a child, but they have held up well over the last 3 months.  I simply cut the pant more straight by not following the curves and then added some fancy top stitching with metallic thread to make them more special.

These are simple adjustments and she loves the jeans.

(excuse the Christmas decor, please)

Next, I made some that were inspired by motorcycle riding pants.  On these, I uses some faux leather scraps to create accents on the pockets and fancy buttons to dress them up.

The changes I did to the pattern was to lengthen the leg and use some of her boot cut pants as an outline for the last 4 inches of the leg.  That seemed to do the trick though she wants them wider next time.  I also modified the technique for making built in knee patches that I learned from the blog MADE.  Basically I cut out the knee portion of the pattern for the front of the leg and basted it to the top of the front legs before sewing.  Then, I top stitched at angles with a thick top stitching thread to give the moto look.  Abi and I love this look and it is very practical for your rough and tumble kids.

I use variations of this technique on all of my younger boy's pants.

What do you do to change up your pants patterns?  Do you have a favorite pattern for boys or girl pants?

Making Jeans

 Do you sew your tween's jeans?  I think this is one of the most intimidating of all articles of clothing for a home sewer.  There is the fly and then all that top-stitching.  But really, they are not as hard as they look and with the right hardware and embellishments, you can make a very cool looking pair of jeans.

But are they worth it?  You can buy jeans pretty cheap at most kids clothing stores, so you may wonder if it make sense to make jean.  I (Major Moma) did not feel like making any one year for my daughter and Old Navy had their back to schools sales with $10 jeans.  How could I pass that up?  Well, the first day my daughter wore a pair that I bought, she went riding on her bike and fell; the knee in those jeans had a huge rip in it.  On day one.  Isn't that supposed to be the beauty of denim, its strength and durability?

I have made several pairs of jeans for my son and a few for my daughter and the fabric at Joanns (not a retailer known for its high end fabrics) is a high enough quality that it takes a lot of abuse to wear them out.

So it may be worth it to you to sew jeans.  But what patterns to use?  Sew Cool has reviewed a couple patterns and so you can see what we think of some options.

Ottobre 3/2010 by Land of KA

Burda Kids 9500

Burdastyle #149

Below is a roundup of various patterns, some I have sewn and some that I have seen around on the internet.

Slim Jim Pants by Felicity

Burdastyle corduroy pants 11/2013

The Sand & Sidewalk Boardshorts and Skate Pants 

Only up to size 10; but Peek-a-Boo skinny jeans
have great reviews. (affiliate)

Burdastyle Boy's corduroy pants 08/2013

small fry skinny jean

And now that you see some options, we would like all of you to show the jeans patterns that you love and share your experiences.  We have a special linky party open just for jeans and pants.  Please link up any jeans patterns that you have sewn for your tween or at least the pattern has tween sizes.

Pant linky party HERE

Finally, we have started a new board on our Pinterest account that is solely dedicated to jeans.  You can pop on over to there to see various patterns and tutorials to make you home made jeans custom and cool.

Let's sew some jeans!

October Linky Party--Special Jeans/Pants Edition

Link up any jeans or pants that you've sewn for your tween in the last little while.  We're all about sharing the love here and not only would we, but others as well, would love to see your go-to pants pattern for your tweens!
We'll keep this one open a little longer and would love for you to invite others to share as well.  We've had some requests for great pants patterns and since we can't sew them all (nor do they all look good on our tweens), we thought it best to open it up for you to all share!  So link a way!

An InLinkz Link-up