Arms to Legs

So, what to do with the ragged woolly arms left over from the jumper to pixie hats? Looking at a heap of sweater-arms put me in mind of legs, or rather leggings. So with another two little easy lines of sewing we have woolly trousers galore here. The first pair I made were for Esmé and were square set and so EASY I laughed. And not the superfine merino either, a thicker wool (wool soaker/longie potential?) which look more like real trousers anyway. But the rest of my pile of body-less sweaters had diagonal set sleves.... hmmmm, after a mistake or two I saw easily that I just needed to cut like they were really square set. Here's how to use up those arms:

Cut on the string line



You will then have these:



Next sew together from the back (with fabric right side to right side, or er, butt cheek to butt cheek if that helps visualise), right through to crotch and then up to the front waist line. One nice easy line of sewing.



You can see the basic shape now:



Turn back the waist line an inch and sew around leaving a space to thread some elastic (insert a safety pin through the elastic for ease of threading). For sizing, put the elastic around the child's waist and add an inch. Use the extra inch for sewing together once threaded around the waist band. Sew the little gap up and Voilá - from Arms to Legs - your very own Woolly pants.









Well, we like them :) I am thinking maybe cotton arms from unwanted long t-shirts might be turned into summery style trousers too? Ohhh, the possibilities for revamping clothes, turning old to new is endless! BTW, Felix is totally colour blind and pink and blue look the same, so when he saw the wool trousers he said Ohhh are they for me ? (gender colour stereotyping just never happened here as both boys are colour blind). They are so soft – like skin! And then slithered into them snake-like. He has worn them for two days straight now. His particular ones were an old lambswool cardigan of mine that I accidently threw in the wash and although the arms were still octopuss-y the body would not fit over my milkers (as we call them here, bovine like). So now they have a new life (and yes I turned the body into a pretty pink pixie hat too – taking my grand pixie hat total to 8 so far).