My children are doomed to a life of small butts and lanky frames because genetics. As a result they grow too tall for clothes long before they grow too wide. My daughter never wears jeans because none fit her proportions and instead we go for stretchy pants. She can usually wear these for years before they no longer fit her waist. After the first year we just pretend they were always capri pants. However she eventually wore out the knees of many pairs of these short pants so I decided to convert them all into proper shorts.
These pants make great shorts because the knit fabric doesn't unravel so no need to hem them. After cutting the pants my daughter made the brilliant suggestion of turning the leg remnants into pockets for the shorts. My idea was to make pockets like I did for my athletic pants where the pockets are on the outside of the thighs. After doing that to a couple pair she decided she'd rather have more typical pockets up by the hips.
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| Pockets 1.0 |
Since these pants only have seams on the inside of the legs they'd have to be patch-style upper pockets. I tried to find a suitable pattern for pork chop pockets but didn't find anything like I wanted so I made my own with scrap paper. After completing one pair of pants with the new pocket design I took pictures of the steps for the next pair to record how I did it.
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| Pockets 2.0 |
Step 1: cut off legs at desired length.
Step 2: cut the remnants open along the inner seam and lay flat.
Step 3: lay pattern piece so that the pocket "opening" bit lays along the original pant hem. Flip pattern and cut a mirrored piece out of the second remnant.
Step 4: Place pocket pieces where you want them on the shorts. The yellow shorts I simply zigzag stitched the pockets to the shorts but it was very difficult because the pants legs are so narrow and I ended up with a bit of a wavy edge. For the pink and white shorts I used Stitch Witchery fusible tape cut in half lengthwise (to make a narrower tape) to fuse the edges with the iron. That worked nicely. For shorts 2.0 I decided to do a little of both. I fused the edges of the pockets with the Stitch Witchery to hold them in place then went back over those edges with a zigzag stretch stitch. The location on the pants made them easier to sew on the machine and the reinforcement of the fusible tape made the stretchy fabric feed through the machine easily.
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| Pinned pocket in place with strips of Stitch Witchery sandwiched between the layers. Ironed and fused according to package directions. |
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| Topstitched fused edges |
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All done!
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She tried them on and loves them. She's all set for summer, I didn't have to buy any new bottoms for her, and she has pockets. Win-win-win!
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