Saturday, March 10, 2012

Smarty Pants

Last weekend saw me in my sewing room working on a fun little project for Marie, my little red-headed wild child.  In the spirit of her radiant personality I wanted these "fancy pants" to be free-spirited, colorful, and very happy...just like Marie!

I came across this tutorial online that was extremely helpful so I'm not going to write a whole step-by-step tutorial...more of a quick overview.

I opened up my jeans side seams as directed in the tutorial I linked to above, and rough cut out flower designs from two Kaffe Fassett fabrics that I'd been saving in my stash for the perfect "Marie" project.


Next I ironed HeatNBond Lite to the backsides of my flowers, cut them out more precisely, and arranged and re-arranged until ended up with this arrangement. 

Note: please learn from me and iron the HeatNBond onto the fabric before you even cut the flowers out.  Because I rough cut my flowers out first, it was difficult to iron the HeatNBond onto the flowers without getting my iron and ironing board cover all sticky.

HeatNBond allows you to make a sort of  "patch" out of any piece of fabric by ironing it onto the backside of a fabric, then peeling off the paper to reveal the adhesive patch that you can then cut as desired and iron into place.  I use it all the time and LOVE it!


I started with the bottom-most layer, pressing each piece onto the denim and then stitching around each piece about 1/4inch from the edge using white thread.  Once I re-sewed up the side seams and the redid the hem in that area, the pants were done!

I also added some flowers to a plain t-shirt for a coordinating outfit, though I also have a hot pink t-shirt that she will wear with these in the summer.


My girl!


blessings,
Jessica

10 comments:

  1. Oh that is adorable! And what a lovely little girl :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. So cute! What a great way to use cute cotton prints to make fun, comfy play clothes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, this is so cute!!! What a simple way to give an ordinary outfit some pizazz!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love this! I got a couple of wild boys on my hands, and standard issue clothes often don't cut it for them. They're the reason I got into sewing!
    http://thestagecoachroad.wordpress.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Really nice way will I try it Thank you

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a great choice of fabric! You are brilliant
    Embroidery Digitizers

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's so clever! My daughter is refusing to wear anything that isn't super girly but I need her to wear warm pants in winter - this is a great solution!

    ReplyDelete
  8. You did an excellent job. It is a wonderful idea so that we can convince our little girl to wear pants. I am impressed with your brilliant mind. A lot of thanks for sharing.


    Michelle

    ReplyDelete
  9. Project's great, the model's gorgeous! ;) I must try it for my wee man sometime.
    http://sewingyourstyle.tumblr.com

    ReplyDelete
  10. I saw this photo on pinterest and just had to pop over to say I love that fabric--I used it for curtains and bedding in my daughter's nursery! This would be a fun way to use some scraps :)

    ReplyDelete