Leggings – Lesson Learned

Over the weekend,  I attempted my first sewing project with a pair of pants. As I breezed through my first project of the day (the turtleneck rehab), I felt confident that could easily refashion a pair of Clara’s pants into leggings. Let’s just say, it was a great learning experience!

Inspired by a legging tutorial from Make It and Love it, I thought resizing a pair of old PJ’s pants into leggings would be a breeze!

I started off strong, using another pair of leggings as my guide.

Marking my cut and giving myself a generous seam allowance.

Using my new rotary cutter to trim off excess material. ( I heart my rotary cutter!)

Pinning and sewing it up.

And the Finished product looked good on my table!

But, it all started to fall apart when it came to pictures. First, my middle child managed to knock all the pins off of the sewing table to the floor. Then, my model wouldn’t hold still for pictures. The best one I could get was this…

And then, amidst all of the squirming, the new seam ripped.  I was so sad that I didn’t take a picture.

And so I learned a few things from this experience….

Note to Self: When making leggings, be sure to pick incredibly stretchy fabric, old cotton PJ pant material just won’t do. I was hopeful that the material would be stretchy enough. It wasn’t. Read your tutorial over carefully, because it will probably spefically say to make sure your fabric has Lycra or Spandex in it. WhoOps…

Note to Self 2: Get a double needle. Reinforcing pants seams with that second needle must be key to a successful product.

All in all, not a total loss. These pants were destined for the donation pile anyway, and I learned a few things about making leggings in the process. Trial and error? Definitely! Hopefully, you too can learn from my mistakes! I feel a success coming the next time around when I actually have the right material!