Idea for litte girl pants

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I have a little girl, age 7 and I had a difficault time finding decent pants for her to wear to school. She has very long legs (takes after her Daddy, I have the shortest legs in the world!) but she's slender. If the pants fit her waist they are way too short, if they fit her legs, the waist gaps open. So I decided to make her some-I found a simple girls pants pattern that fit her waist then lengthened the legs. But finding suitable fabric for the pants was difficult then I discovered that many stores-including wal-mart carries "Scrub" fabric for Doctors, nurses ect. This stuff is a cotton/poly blend and now it comes in very bright colors and is cheap (enough)-it also come 60" wide so One yard will get a pair of pants for her-I've made a pair of purple pants and hot pink-She loves them and they are wearing really well-the fabric is designed for lots of laundering-I'm thinking now of making a pair for myself when I sub-teach at the elementary school. Anyway, I was excited about this discovery and thought I'd share.

-- Kelly in Ky (ksaderholm@yahoo.com), October 10, 2001

Answers

Good job Kelly! We have a similar problem with my soon to be 15 year old daughter. She weighs about 90 pounds, and is 5ft 5in tall. So any jeans she buys are either too big around the waist or too short.A size one fits but is too short. So we have decided she needs a sz. one/long. I don't know if we will ever find such a thing, but Friday evening I have promised a shopping expedition to the MALL... I will probably need therapy come Saturday!

-- Melissa (cmnorris@1st.net), October 10, 2001.

Melissa~ Try the gap. They make size ones and have regular and long lengths. Their jeans aren't cheap, but they're not the most expensive either. If your daughter is so hard to fit, I'm sure you will get your money's worth out of a pair that actually fit.

-- Ivy in NW AR (balch84@cox-internet.com), October 10, 2001.

I hear ya, all the ones I had gotten at garage sales recently are still way to big for her, her old ones are to short! Mine is 7 also, so I decided I'd go shop retail, "horrors" for her just 2 pair to get us thru till I find more at thrift or garage sales. Well I just can't see spending $17-20 a pair for a size 6 slim, in little girls!!!! So I just went to 3 stores and left empty handed stopped by one thrift store also, but no luck, so you know after looking at what they had on hand for sale, I decided I might could find a plain pair used or at this outlet store in another town and buy some of that glitter paint, and spray on the jeans to make it look like the electric denim they sell in the stores, or do some stitching around the bottoms, or paint a flower on them. Also going to make some jumpers and dresses, I thought about makeing some of those polyester pants, but she already has one pair and there not wearing very well, the scrub material sounds good, but not very warm in winter, thats the problem we have with dresses, her legs get cold waiting on the bus, and yes we can wear tights but she goes thru them fast, she's a little petite thing, but living in the country she needs jeans, even at school the tights seem to rip, run, or whatever. Anyone know of a good place to order or buy, extra heavy duty tights for winter.?

-- Carol in Tx (cwaldrop@peoplescom.net), October 10, 2001.

For the little girls needing heavy tights, go to a ballet store or and ice skating rink. There are tights for ice skaters and dancers to keep their muscles warm and are made for a good bit of wear. Just a thought. Also, sometimes they have close-out sales, or look for tights in "google" or such on the internet. Angie in AL

-- Angie M (ameining@ingr.com), October 11, 2001.

Aren't bell bottoms (or flares or whatever they're calling them now) back in style? Revive another style -- add something around the bottom. That's what we did in the late '60's/early '70's when our pants/jeans ended up too short. Of course, that was the "psychedelic" era, so the fabrics were pretty wild. Something I did to a couple of my pairs of jeans was to make an "insert" between main part of leg and the hem. I needed to lengthen them 2 inches, and figuring that I would lose a total of 1 inch (using 1/4 inch seams), I cut off the bottom of the leg about 3 inches up from the bottom edge, made a 3 inch wide insert (making sure I maintained the flare of the pants), and sewed it in between the cutoff edges. I used a matching denim for my insert, but you could use a different color. Try to match the weight of the fabric of the pants though. If you can only find a lighter weight fabric, you could either double the fabric, or use a light weight fusible (maybe a knit?) on the back side to make it a similar weight to the main fabric. Since I didn't use contrasting fabric on mine, I concealed the seams with a woven patterned ribbon trim over them (make sure it's washable and pre- shrunk). My pants were the envy of the entire dorm!

If you're getting pants from garage sales, you might feel more like experimenting on them than if you bought them at retail. I could see making diagonal inserts, maybe some fringed stuff, etc. I don't have kids of my own, so I am not really "up" on what's currently "cool". If you have confident kids, they would probably like being trend setters!

Something my mother did with my sister's pants, when she was 3-6, was put patches on pants on the knees. Sister spent all her time on her knees, playing on the floor, and wore out her pants a LOT. So mom made patches for her knees out of corduroy. I remember a whale and a turtle. Those pants became major favorites.

-- Joy F [in So. Wisconsin] (CatFlunky@excite.com), October 11, 2001.



I agree that the poly pants arn't terrifically warm, but she will mostly be wearing them to school where the classrooms are pretty warm. And I've bought (but havn't gotten around to sewing yet) some heavyier corduroy, plus I have allready made some denium ones for her. She wears patched jeans around here, I've made heart patches, etc-thats a great idea, though about adding fabric at the bottom-I've seen other kids wear that type that were purchased at the store. She dosn't really care about what other kids wear-if she likes it, she'll wear it, otherwise, no-way even if every kid in school had it on. Thanks! Does anyone else have problems getting decent shoes? I hate those with the big soles and refuse to buy them, but there dosn't seem to be much choice when it comes to decnt kids shoes-I uasually order them online, and make them take them off as soon as they get home!!!!

-- Kelly in Ky (ksaderholm@yahoo.com), October 11, 2001.

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