How to make GOOD looking pants

Alrighty day one! I am PUMPED! Especially starting out with this tutorial. I have been wanting to share how to make Evie's green pants for a while.

The problem is that I cannot find the correct material ANYWHERE. To make a good looking children's pair of pants there are a few crucial steps (that I will share with you today) the first being the right material. If you make pants with a flimsy cotton they are not going to look nice. They are going to billow and wrinkle and not hold shape. You need a thicker cotton like Poplin or Khaki that is stiff but still soft and washable. While the fabric shop here has enough polyester to fill your every odd desire it has nothing like this, and keeping to my own rule of not ordering fabric I have been a bit stuck. Thankfully I received a package last week from my Mom and sister. It has some sweet fabric in it and luckily it had a thicker cotton. Now it isn't really as thick as it needs to be and you can see in the pictures it doesn't lay quite as nice BUT it was a far cry closer then anything else I had (so thank you Mom!). So today I will be showing you how to make the green pants... in purple!

Now for my green pants I did take the extra step of lining them with a super light thin white cotton and I did make actual pockets, but for this tutorial to be more useful to more people I took those steps out :) Again I would stress that to make these just like the green pair use stiffer fabric. Now, even if you don't plan on making these pants I would totally suggest reading through the tutorial because I share some tricks on how to make your pants look less home made :)

Oh and by the way there is no way I could have done this photo shoot without the help of our "sponsor"

Even when I thought we had lost a few to the grass, Evie proved me wrong

Thank heavens for candy ha! Hope you read the rest!

Before we begin you should probably know what you need:

1 yard of sturdy cotton fabric

matching thread

scissors

small piece of wide elastic

sewing machine

hand stitching needle

Hot iron/ board

Now a few things to know before you start cutting. The thing that makes these pants look nice is the chunky hems both on the bottom of the legs and on the waistband. Make sure make sure make sure when you are cutting to add a good extra chunk at the top and the bottom for these. I did not on the top but there was a reason, I am all out of wide elastic and if you put thin elastic in a wide hem it looks awful. To get the best results us a wide hem at the top filled with a wide elastic :) Alright lets get going. 

Take a pair of your cuties pants. Preferably a soft cotton pair not a denim pair. One of the BIG mistakes I see in the blogging world when making pants is using only on piece for all four pant leg pieces. This is just wrong, easy, but wrong. The front of your pants does not look like the back so why would you cut them the same? Using a more malleable pair of pants for your pattern will help you fold and mold the pants so you are tracing the true front and back pieces. Just real quick the main difference is the pant legs in the front have a much steeper rise then those in the back (I share pictures later) but keep that in mind while cutting. 

Once you have cut out your 2 back pieces lay them to the side and re-fold your example pants so you can cut out the front pieces

It really is important that you make the pant pieces the same length. While you can trim them later it is always nice to just get it right the first time :) Once done take your two front pieces and lay them right side up

When you are done you should have something similar to this:

Now the pants come together like most other pants with a few little extra steps to give them a bit of omph.

Match up one front pant leg with one back pant leg, laying them right sides together and lining up their outside edge. Then sew up the outside edge

Topstitching this on the right side will keep the fabric laying nice and straight and give it just that much more sturdiness. Now is a good time to hem the bottom of the pants. Head to the iron and lay the pant legs so that wrong side is facing you. 

Now with right sides facing each other sew up the center seam. Again I flipped these right side out and topstitched them to give them the more professional look. 

Now we are going to sew the "seat" of the pants because I don't like that other word for it ha! Yup, I am a lame mommy. :) 

Okay so this is a sort of but not really tricky part. I explain in the photos but I am going to reexplain really quick. First you are going to ONLY sew down the part of the top hem that is in back. Start at one side seam and sew to the other. This way you have an opening through which you feed your elastic. 

I sewed three buttons on each side on a slant. My first button is right up on the waistband and then gradually goes diagonally until the 3 button is right by the side seam. If you did pockets you will need to be careful because the button hole and button will need to go through all the layers. So there you have it! I promise that if you take the time to do the few extra steps your pants are going to look a lot nicer!

Even if they will just have Smartie juice drooled on them it's worth it right :)