B. has grown and his clothes are too small again. Most of B.’s clothes is borrowed from a friend or gifted to us by family. T-shirts, shirts and jumpers are favorite pieces to be gifted, trousers, leggings and pants are what we usually buy. This time I decided that I am going to sew B.’s leggings myself. Ehm… And with B. himself. I did not know how I would be sewing with a toddler by my side, but it worked!

There are few reasons why I want to sew B.’s leggings and other clothes for him and M. and me. Firstly, B. needs clothes that would fit him. Secondly, looking for the right-size second-hand clothes is similarly time-consuming like sewing them myself. I try to buy second-hand clothes as there is so many and as children outgrow their clothes in few months, it is usually in very good condition. Thirdly, I do want to use existing resources which we already have – fabric stash full of our clothes that do not fit us any more or clothes worn-out on some places (knees, crotch) and completely wearable on most of it.

Procedure

Sewing pattern

I looked up some sewing patterns online and bought few. For leggings I chose this one covering sizes from one month to ten years. So I printed out the pattern, glued pages together and cut the pieces out.

Cutting fabric

Then I chose M.’s now too small T-shirt, cut off all the seams and ironed it well on my sleeve ironing board. It reminded me that I need to buy a bigger ironing board because B. stepped on our previous table ironing board and broke its “leg”.

I cut out the pices.

Sewing

B. wanted to participate so he moved his learning tower to my desk and chose a color of the thread. Red. At first I tried to persuade him that when we have grey fabric we usually use grey thread. But then I said to myself: “So what! He chose red, it does not do any harm, he will have a special detail on his leggings that he made a decision about.” So he helped me to thread the sewing machine with the red thread. I pinned the pieces that needed to be sewn together. And we were ready to sew.

B. was pressing a foot controller laid on the table and I was directing the fabric under the presser foot. (Almost) every time we finished sewing a seam I switched the sewing machine off with a power switch in order everybody and everything is safe. Once I forgot about it and B. pressed the controller, upper and bottom thread got tangled and he needed to wait until I fix it. After that he did not pressed the controller but when I told him to.

It went very well: B. pressed the controller and I directed the fabric. B. waited and I pinned the pieces together. We both practiced patience – him waiting, me waiting and directing his activity. After about two hours pair of leggings was finished. B. sewed for most of the time, he literally quit when there were just five centimeters left to be sewn. I did not manage to align seams on the back but I am not bothered by that. After all, the toddler and I sewed the pair of leggings!

Leggings marked

Leggings fit well but I think it needed a fabric with more stretch. B. did not want me to take a picture of him wearing leggings, so there is none so far… I very early resigned from trying to capture a nice picture, as leggings were stained by B.’s lunch just few minutes after finishing them.