Princess loves wearing leggins. She wears them as pants. She wears them under skirts and dresses. She’s even occasionally worn them under shorts. So when she came to me with a hole in the knee of her favorite black capri leggins I knew I had to do something to save them.
I decided since the sort of retro 80’s look seems to be in (have you SEEN the amount of neon at the tween type stores!) that I’d make a sort of “slashed” effect-thereby turning the hole into a deliberate design choice and salvaging the leggins.
I had recently shortened a pair of hot pink yoga pants (at 5’2″ I have to shorten a lot of things) and had some nice strips of jersey material that was of a similar type to the fabric of the leggins. I’m sure any kind of t-shirty type material would work. You just wouldn’t want to use something too stiff.
The process was pretty easy, if a bit awkward. I turned the leggins inside out and pinned the material to the inside of each leg-making sure my original hole was in the center of the fabric-then using my sewing machine I carefully sewed the fabric in 4 places on each leg. I was basically creating 3 “blocks” with the original hole was in the center “block”:
If you don’t have a sewing machine, just hand sew it! Next I turned the leggins right side out. I took a seam ripper and made a slash in each of the sections on the front very carefully:
The pink fabric seemed to be rolling in on the sides. After a few washings I was afraid that it would roll up so much that you’d be able to see her skin on the outside edges of the slashes. To prevent that I used a plain old needle and thread and hand sewed down the edges on both sides:
Here’s the finished product:
Of course she wouldn’t normally wear them with that top-it was a “put these on so I can take a picture” situation 🙂
I think that I did a good job of rescuing something that I would have otherwise had to toss in the trash. Not only that but the first time she wore them to school some of her fashion conscious friends wanted to know where she got them! I call that a Frugal Mom Win!
Have any of you ever used a clever or creative way to rescue a damaged piece of clothing?
Deborah Aldridge says
That’s awesome! I’ve turned pants into shorts and dresses into shirts and even once took apart an entire dress and turned it into a skirt and vest (but that was just because I didn’t like it), but nothing really artistic like this. You should make some and sell them to her friends.
Karen says
I did sort of the opposite thing last week to make the clothing works for us. I took the long sleeves off a onesie to make it short sleeve and my boys used the sleeves as leggings/arm blasters as they run around the house! http://www.desertdealsdiva.com/2012/04/thrifty-treasure-onesie-leggingsarm-blasters/
P.S. the leggings are super cute!
Jenn @ Frugal Upstate says
What a great idea Karen! I just love giving old things new life.