Saturday, August 6, 2011

Reclaiming the Rag Bag






















An impending move has me mercilessly weeding through my posessions, and I came across two bundles of potentiality that had been lingering in the ragbag for many years. T-shirts and other knits get claimed as rags rather quickly, but old garments unfit for donation might have a long stint, as I am not much of a sewer. The menfolk of my kin are hard on dress shirts, and that compromised a large portion of the ragbag's contents.


The shorts (right) are nothing to write home about- I traced a pair of my infant's shorts for the pattern, then sewed an elastic casing to the top. It's nice to see an old shirt of my brothers' passed on to a new generation.


But I am rather proud of the pants. Since I do most of my sewing by hand, I try to keep the original seams in a garment intact. I cut the arms off an old dress shirt, and again used an existing infant garment as a pattern, leaving an extra few inches in height at the waist to make the elastic casing. All it took was two seams- one between the legs and one around the waist. The inseams of the arms are the inseams of the pants, and the cuffs are a darling detail that allow the pants to grow with the child. If someone in your family has an outgrown plaid shirt, those could be turned into darling preppy pair of pants for your little one.

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